I came into possession of a book on why truth matters and was astonished to read that ‘[t]here are true (sic!) facts’. What on earth are true facts? In the past, we simply had facts and fiction. Why does the former require such a qualifier now? Call me old-fashioned, but such pleonasm is not just a sign of bad style; it’s an indication of the undergoing putrefaction of language—that fundamental instrument for shaping thoughts, expressing emotions, and maintaining social connections, a mirror of values, beliefs, and experiences, that can even influence how people perceive the world. So, I’d rather stick to facts.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
hidden pilcrow 
You put this to words perfectly
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You’ve touched on a genuinely irritating linguistic development. The phrase “true facts” is indeed redundant—a fact, by definition, is something that corresponds to reality. Adding “true” creates the uncomfortable implication that there might also be “false facts,” which is a logical impossibility.
This redundancy likely stems from our current information environment, where the word “fact” has been stretched and weakened through misuse. People routinely present opinions, claims, or disputed assertions as “facts,” so speakers may feel compelled to add “true” as emphasis or clarification. It’s a defensive move against the devaluation of the term itself.
The phenomenon reflects a broader pattern where precision gets sacrificed for emphasis. We see similar redundancies in “past history,” “future plans,” or “end result”—each modifier adds nothing meaningful while revealing anxiety about being understood or believed.
Your concern about language putrefaction isn’t mere pedantry. When foundational terms like “fact” lose their clarity, it becomes harder to distinguish between what is demonstrably so and what is merely asserted. The redundancy signals a crisis of epistemic confidence—if we trusted our ability to recognize facts, we wouldn’t need to qualify them.
Language does evolve, but not all evolution represents improvement. Sometimes linguistic changes reflect conceptual confusion rather than useful adaptation. In this case, “true facts” suggests we’ve lost faith in facts themselves, requiring rhetorical reinforcement for what should stand on its own merit.
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I wouldn’t be so annoyed if it were a newspaper article; however, the fact that it is a book—and even more so, a book about the importance of truth—is unacceptable.
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Exactly—the context makes it exponentially worse. A book explicitly devoted to truth’s importance should demonstrate the very precision it advocates. When authors writing about epistemological rigor can’t maintain basic linguistic accuracy, it undermines their entire argument.
It’s like a carpenter’s manual with wobbly joints or a cookbook with inedible recipes. The medium becomes the message, and the message here is that even truth’s defenders don’t care enough about precision to avoid elementary redundancy.
This kind of sloppiness in philosophical writing is particularly galling because it suggests the author hasn’t thought carefully about their subject. If you’re going to argue for truth’s significance, you should at minimum demonstrate respect for factual accuracy in your own prose. The redundancy reveals either conceptual confusion or editorial carelessness—both fatal for a work on truth.
Books undergo multiple rounds of editing precisely to catch such errors. That “true facts” survived the process suggests either incompetent editing or, worse, that no one involved recognized the problem. Either way, it’s a damning indictment of the work’s intellectual rigor.
The irony is almost perfect: a book arguing for truth’s importance that immediately betrays its own thesis through imprecise language. It’s enough to make one wonder whether the author truly understands the subject they’re attempting to defend.
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