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The term factoid can, in common usage, mean either a false or spurious statement presented as a fact, as well as a true, if brief or trivial, item of news or information. The term was coined in 1973 by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it is not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print. Since its creation in 1973 the term has evolved from its original meaning and has assumed other meanings, particularly being used to describe a brief or trivial item of news or information.
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Usage
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a factoid as a brief or trivial item of news or information and as an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.
The term was coined by American writer Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography of Marilyn Monroe. Mailer described factoids as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper", and created the word by combining the word fact and the ending -oid to mean "similar but not the same". The Washington Times described Mailer's new word as referring to "something that looks like a fact, could be a fact, but in fact is not a fact".
Accordingly, factoids may give rise to, or arise from, common misconceptions and urban legends. Several decades after the term was coined by Mailer, it grew to have several meanings, some of which are quite different from each other. In 1993, William Safire identified several contrasting senses of factoid:
This new sense of a factoid as a trivial but interesting fact was popularized by the CNN Headline News TV channel, which, during the 1980s and 1990s, often included such a fact under the heading "factoid" during newscasts. BBC Radio 2 presenter Steve Wright uses factoids extensively on his show.
Historian Dion Smythe defines factoids to be assertions about the truth, as documented in primary sources of historical research. In this indirect meaning, the truthfulness of factoids comes from objectively observable existence of such assertions themselves, and not from the truthfulness of what they claim about the world.
Versus factlet
As a result of confusion over the meaning of factoid, some English-language style and usage guides recommend against its use. William Safire in his "On Language" column advocated the use of the word factlet instead of factoid to express a brief interesting fact as well as a "little bit of arcana" but did not explain how adopting this new term would alleviate the ongoing confusion over the existing contradictory common use meanings of factoid.
Safire suggested that factlet be used to designate a small or trivial bit of information that is nonetheless true or accurate. A report in The Guardian identified Safire as the writer who coined the term factlet, although Safire's 1993 column suggested factlet was already in use at that time. The Atlantic magazine agreed with Safire, and recommended factlet instead of factoid, such that factlet would signify a "small probably unimportant but interesting fact", and that the term be used in place of factoid, which they saw as often having negative connotations. The term factlet has been used in publications such as Mother Jones, the San Jose Mercury News, and in the Reno Gazette Journal.