Tip #27: Vet your sources.

Before quoting market data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, I double checked my source and, my bad, learned it was the Canadian government. When I realized my mistake, I asked: Does it matter? In fact, it did not. What mattered was that the statistic was current and credible.

It's easy to click through Google results and forget to note the context of the web pages, which are often deep links. When you're doing your research, confirm the website's credibility before reading further. And if you download a document, rename it to include the source in the title.