Editorial policy

This page sets out the rules we work to. If you catch us breaking one, tell us.

Fiction, mathematics, context

Every page on emi.me is built from three kinds of material, and we keep them visibly apart.

• Fiction is what happens to an invented character. It is marked with an open circle and set in a serif typeface.
• Mathematics is what the calculation engine produces from stated inputs. It is marked with a solid square and printed on a receipt.
• Context is what a regulation, official publication or other checkable source says. It is marked with a diamond, set in a blue-ruled note, and linked to its source with the date we last checked.

A story may contain all three. It will never present one as another.

Rules for fiction

• All characters, lenders, apps, employers, conversations and events are invented. Fictional institutions are named so they cannot reasonably be confused with a real company, and we check new names before publishing.
• Stories must be plausible. Interest rates, fees, salaries and prices are chosen to be believable for the setting, and are stated as the story’s assumptions, not as market data.
• We do not write characters as fools for borrowing, and we do not write lenders as villains by default. People in our stories have reasons.
• We do not mock people for being in debt, poor, ill, unemployed or under pressure. Humour is aimed at contradictions, incentives and absurd systems.
• Every published story includes at least one honest argument against its own apparent moral.
• We publish stories in which borrowing was the right call.

Rules for numbers

• No financial figure is typed by hand. Stories and pages pull every computed number from the engine when the site is built.
• Every figure shows the assumptions it depends on and says what it leaves out.
• The engine is tested against values computed by a separate implementation. See the methodology.
• We do not project investment returns as if they were certain, and we do not present the no-loan path as automatically better.
• Nothing is personalised advice. The tools show what follows from your inputs; the decision is yours.

Rules for facts

• Regulatory and legal statements cite a primary source, normally the Reserve Bank of India, with the document title, its date and the date we last opened it.
• If we could not verify something from a primary source, we either leave it out or say plainly that it is unverified.
• We do not invent statistics, survey results, lender policies or quotations, and we do not use phrases like “most borrowers” without evidence.
• Regulation changes. Each page in The Fine Print carries a “sources last checked” date. Treat anything older than a few months as a starting point and open the source.

Independence

emi.me carries no advertising, no affiliate links, no sponsored content and no lender partnerships. Nobody outside the editorial team sees or approves content before publication.

Use of AI tools

We use AI tools in drafting, coding and checking. A human editor is responsible for everything published. The safeguards on this page apply regardless of how a draft was produced: figures come from the tested engine, facts need a cited source, and fiction is labelled as fiction.

Corrections

When we get something wrong we fix it and change the page’s updated date. For an error in a calculation, a regulatory statement or anything a reader may have relied on, we add a dated note to the page saying what changed.