Suneet Singal on how to write a source note

Suneet Singal’s career page is readable because the sentences sit next to sources, and a source note is the small record that makes that possible. A source note names the document, the date, the link, and the limit of what that document supports. It is not a bibliography dumped at the end of a confident paragraph. It is the paragraph’s restraint, written down. This entry shows the fields, then fills them for the two historical filings and for a program’s founder wording. It also shows what a note refuses: a motive, a current job, a merged company name, and a number the document did not supply. The note is finished when a stranger can open the link and find the same fact. If the stranger would not find the claim, the note is still a draft.

What the note is for

A source note lets a second reader audit a sentence without interviewing the writer. The audit has four questions. Which document? Which date inside that document? Where is the link? What does the document not establish? If the note answers those four, the sentence can travel. If it answers only the first, the sentence will be rewritten by every person who touches it, because nothing in the note resists the rewrite. Resistance is the purpose. You are not writing the note to look scholarly. You are writing it so that “acting” cannot fall off, so that 22 December cannot become 2 January, and so that a program cannot become an issuer.

The note is about one claim. A paragraph that makes two claims needs two notes, or one note with two labeled claims. A note that tries to support a whole biography will be vague in the way biographies are vague. Vague notes cite “company filings” and “public information.” Those phrases cannot be opened on a particular paragraph. Cite the filing that supports the sentence you are actually publishing. Leave the rest of the biography to other notes. The career page works as a set of notes, not as one note that covers a life.

Suneet Singal is the person in the examples because his site is the site these notes serve. The method is not personal to him. Anyone describing a former role, a program, or a figure in a financial statement can use the same fields. The financial-statement versions of the fields add a column date and a caption, which the balance-sheet entry discusses. This entry stays with the documents the career record and the program pages actually rely on.

The fields

Use a fixed order so you notice holes. Document type and title. Author or issuer, using the legal name if the document is a filing. Date of the document, labeled as a report date if that is what it is. Date of the event, labeled effective or agreement if you are relying on that date. The claim, in one sentence, with the title copied exactly. The URL. The limit, in one sentence. The date you checked the URL. That last field is about your note, not about the event. Pages move. A checked date tells the next editor when the link was alive in your hands.

The claim sentence should be dull. “First Capital Investment Corporation reported an acting chief executive officer appointment effective 12 September 2017.” Dull means every noun is checkable. If you want a livelier sentence for a public page, the lively sentence has to be weaker than or equal to the dull one, never stronger. The note holds the dull version. The public sentence may shorten only by omitting a field it does not contradict. It may not shorten by changing acting into a bare chief executive title, and it may not shorten the issuer into a fragment that fits another firm.

The limit sentence is not boilerplate you paste without reading. It names the specific over-reading this document invites. For an officer appointment, the invited over-reading is “and he still holds it” or “and that means every similarly named company.” For a departure, the invited over-reading is a motive or a payment. For a program page, the invited over-reading is “and therefore the corporate offices were the program.” Write the limit that matches the temptation. A generic “not legal advice” can sit on the page as well. It does not replace the specific limit. This whole library says it is a reading guide, not legal or financial advice. The note still has to say what this document fails to prove.

A note for the December 2017 report

Document: Form 8-K of FC Global Realty Incorporated. Report date used on this site: 28 December 2017. Claim: the report describes a resignation and separation agreement on 22 December 2017, and a chief executive officer departure effective 2 January 2018. URL: the EDGAR address for that filing. Limit: the note does not state a motive, a payment, a successor, any other office, any financial result, or a current job. Checked against the career page’s use of those dates. A stranger should be able to open the URL and find the resignation, the agreement date, and the effective date without adopting any sentence this note refused.

Do not add a second issuer to this note to “provide context.” Context belongs in a second note. The September 2017 appointment is true and irrelevant to the truth of the January effective date. Placing it in the same limit-free paragraph is how readers build a single employment that spans both companies. The timeline entry tells you to use two rows. The source note is the row written out in sentences. Two notes, two URLs, no shared date. If a designer places them in one card, the card still shows two links and two legal names.

If you quote, quote the title and the dates, not a reconstructed explanation. You do not need a quotation mark around a date you have paraphrased faithfully. You do need the URL. A quotation without a URL is a performance. A URL without the date type is an invitation to grab the wrong day. The report-date entry is the companion. Use it when the note contains more than one date, which this one does. Label all three: report, agreement, effective. A note that says “dated December 2017” has not finished its work.

A note for the September 2017 appointment

Document: Form 8-K of First Capital Investment Corporation, September 2017. Claim: appointment of Suneet Singal as acting chief executive officer, effective 12 September 2017. URL: that filing’s EDGAR address. Limit: historical; the word acting is part of the claim; the note is not about any other entity whose name includes the words First Capital; the note is not a current job; the note is not a board biography unless a separate claim is sourced, and this note does not make that separate claim. The limit is long because the temptations are specific. Shorten the public sentence if you must. Do not shorten the note by dropping acting or the legal name.

The month “September 2017” is the report timing this site uses. The day 12 September 2017 is the effective date. The note should not present those as duplicates. If your template has one date field, put the effective date in the claim and the month in the document line. A template that forces one unlabeled date will destroy this note the first time someone exports it to a spreadsheet. Fix the template. Add a date-type column. The professional-timeline entry is the argument for that column. The source note is the content that will be mangled if the column is missing.

Check the URL against the legal name before you publish. The CIK embedded in the EDGAR path belongs to this filer and not to the FC Global Realty Incorporated report. Swapped links are a common failure when two notes are drafted side by side. Open each link. Read the registrant line. Then read your claim. The minute you need to “remember” which link is which, you are tired enough to swap them. Read instead. The company-record guide starts with the issuer for the same reason. Identity is the first field because every other field is worthless if the identity is wrong.

A note for a founder sentence

Document: the program’s own website, named in the note. Claim: the site describes Suneet Singal as founder of that program. URL: the program site, or the education programs page if you are pointing to the directory rather than making a fresh claim. Limit: the note does not state application rules, amounts, or deadlines; it does not convert founder into a corporate office; it does not use a Facebook page as a personal profile. The philanthropy page is the right cross-reference for program Facebook pages. A Facebook URL can be its own note if you are claiming only that a program page exists. It should say it is a program page.

There are three programs, so there are three notes if you are citing three founder descriptions: the Suneet Singal Scholarship, the Suneet Singal Grant, and Suneet Singal Giving. A single note that says “the programs” is acceptable for the directory sentence and too loose for a quotation of one site’s wording. Match the granularity of the note to the granularity of the claim. Broad claim, directory link. Specific claim, specific site. Do not date these notes with 12 September 2017 or 2 January 2018. Those dates have their own notes. Borrowing them is how the layers in the separation entry get fused.

Write the checked date, because program pages change. A founder sentence that was on the page when you read it may be edited later. Your note records what you relied on and when. If you need the wording to remain stable, save a copy and say that you saved it. If you do not save a copy, do not pretend the note freezes the program. The education page already tells readers to confirm the current cycle for program rules. A source note should not be more confident than that page. Founder is the word this reference uses. Rules are the words it leaves to the programs.

What the note refuses

Refuse a present-day job. These notes do not contain one. Refuse a motive for the 2018 departure. Refuse a dollar figure from a separation agreement. Refuse a financial result tied to either issuer. Refuse a hypothetical from the finance entries: those numbers are labeled hypothetical and die in their own essays. Refuse a quotation the person did not publish. Refuse any sentence that begins “he often says” unless the next field is a URL to the words. The managing-up blog post is a URL you may cite for the existence of that post. It is not a license to invent additional remarks.

Refuse merged names. If the claim says First Capital Investment Corporation, the URL must be that filer’s URL. If the claim says FC Global Realty Incorporated, the URL must be the December 2017 report, not the other one. Refuse a note that supports “CEO” with a link to a program site. Refuse a note that supports “founder” with a link to EDGAR. Cross-wired notes are worse than missing notes, because they look checked. The check is the moment you open the link and look for the noun in the claim. If the noun is not there, the note is false. Do not keep it because the rest of the paragraph is convenient.

Refuse to let the limit become a slur or a defense. The limit is not “and nothing else about him is true.” It is “this document does not establish the extra thing.” Other documents may establish other things. A selected record can say it is selected. The career page does. A source note copies that modesty. Modesty is not vagueness. The claim is specific. The limit is specific. Together they are a boundary a fair reader can stand on, whether the reader is sympathetic or skeptical. The boundary does not move to match the reader.

How to keep notes alive

Store the note where the sentence lives. A footnote, a visible source list, or a cell beside a timeline row all work if the fields are actually filled. A footnote that says “source: filings” is a gesture, not a note. The sources under this entry are notes in miniature: a name, a URL, and a sentence about what the URL is for. Imitate that pattern in your own writing. When you add a sentence to a biography, add the note in the same edit. A sentence added “for flow” without a note is how acting disappears and how dates get rounded. Flow can wait. The note cannot.

Re-open the URLs when the page is revised. Confirm the legal name, the title, and the dates you print. If the public sentence has drifted from the note, change the sentence, not the historical date. Historical dates do not get updated to sound current. If a link breaks, find the same document rather than a commentary about the document. Commentary is a new source and needs its own limit. The EDGAR document remains the issuer’s report. A blog post about the report is not a substitute for the report in a note that claims to describe the filing.

When you are tired, use the shortest honest note. Issuer, document, effective date, URL, “historical.” That short note beats a fluent paragraph you cannot audit. The rest of this library is an expansion of that short note: how to read the form, how to label dates, how to keep a title, how to keep a company name, how to keep a program in its own layer. The expansion is useful. The short note is the part that has to be true. Write it first. Let the prose follow it, and delete any prose the note cannot carry.

What this entry does not claim

Suneet Singal’s published professional background is in real estate and corporate finance. Company filings linked from this site record a chief executive officer departure from FC Global Realty Incorporated effective 2 January 2018 and an acting chief executive officer appointment at First Capital Investment Corporation effective 12 September 2017. The Suneet Singal Scholarship, Grant and Giving websites describe him as the founder of those programs. This entry explains a general subject. It is not a private track record, a current job title, an investment result, or a quote.

Continue with how to build a professional timeline and how to read a Form 8-K. The notes behind the dated roles are linked from the career page. This is a reading guide, not legal or financial advice.