 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.