How this handbook is written and kept accurate

Sources

Factual statements are based on documents from bodies with a public responsibility or a recognised reference role. In this edition that means the US Federal Trade Commission, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Canadian Conservation Institute, the University of California's Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program, UNESCO, Encyclopaedia Britannica and the American Cleaning Institute. Sellers' product pages, brand marketing and anonymous tips are not used as the basis for any statement.

Each chapter ends with a list of the documents it relies on. Those documents change over time, so each chapter shows the date its sources were last confirmed and says that a full check against their text is still pending.

Sourced facts and general practice

A lot of useful hat care is practical know-how that no regulator or reference work writes down: drying a cap over a bowl, filling a crown with tissue, trimming rather than pulling a loose thread. The handbook includes this kind of advice because it is useful, but it describes it as general practice rather than presenting it as established fact. It does not attach numbers, such as temperatures or times, to advice that is not tied to a source.

Writing

• Plain language, with hat and textile terms explained the first time they appear.
• Source material is paraphrased, not copied.
• Worked examples are invented to illustrate a point. They describe no real person or business, and the chapters say so by labelling them as examples.
• Cleaning advice always starts with the gentlest method and says when a specialist is the better choice.

Independence

The handbook has no commercial relationships. It does not name or recommend brands, shops or products, and it shows no prices. If a sentence ever seems to promote a product or seller, it is a mistake and will be corrected.

Links

In this first edition, cited documents are named but not linked, so that every page can be reviewed before any outbound link is added. Any links added later will go only to pages that help the reader. Paid or sponsored links, if there ever are any, will be labelled as such on the page and marked with the appropriate link attributes.

Updates and corrections

Chapters will be re-checked against their sources when those sources change. A correction that changes the meaning of a chapter will be noted at the end of that chapter with the date. There is no contact route yet, so corrections currently come from that periodic re-checking rather than from reader reports.

Use of AI

The chapters were drafted with an AI system from the cited documents and from general practice. A line-by-line check against those documents and an independent human editorial review have not been done yet. The about page describes how the handbook was made.