Editorial Standards

These are the standards abshoo.net is written to. They exist so that a sentence on this site can be held against something.

Where the figures come from

Litre figures, heights, depths, laptop sizes, age ranges, colourways and prices come from our own product data, and a page prints them out of that data rather than out of a paragraph somebody typed. Where a bag gives no litre figure or no dimensions, the line is left blank rather than guessed. A measurement we do not have is not invented.

What a weight guideline may claim here

The fifteen per cent figure on this site is the American Academy of Pediatrics guideline for a packed school bag against a child's body weight, and it is quoted with a link to the page it comes from. It is a rule about the load, not a property of a bag: no strap, panel or belt sold here makes a heavy bag light, and nothing on this site says one does.

Claims about backs, chemicals and gates

Anything here that touches a child's back, what a bag may legally contain or what a venue will let through the gate is written under a named public source, listed on the page that makes the claim, with the date it was read. Lead and phthalate limits are described as what the law requires of a product category, never as a badge this catalogue wears. A clear-bag rule is quoted as published and dated, because venues change them.

Photographs

Every bag is shown in the colourway being sold. A photograph with a size chart, an award or a claim printed into the image is kept off the page, and a picture that contradicts the text beside it comes off rather than getting a caption to explain it away.

Comments from buyers

Quotes on the front page are real, public and attributed to a verified buyer rather than to a name and a town. They are shortened for length and never reworded; a complaint stays a complaint. A quote that makes a claim we would not make ourselves is not used, however good it sounds.

What gets pulled

A bag that sells out leaves the site at the next build. A figure that turns out to be wrong is corrected on the page and the correction is noted on how we update the catalogue. Write to satchel@abshoo.net with the page and the figure.