That wasn't Twain: how a misquotation is born

HOW fitting that the man often credited with saying "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes" most likely did not invent the phrase.

Commonly attributed to Mark Twain, that quotation instead appears to be a descendant of a line published centuries ago by satirist Jonathan Swift. Variants emerged and mutated over time until a modern version of the saying was popularised by a Victorian-era preacher, according to Gregory Sullivan, a researcher who, like Twain, prefers a pseudonym.

Seven years ago, under the alias Garson O'Toole, Mr Sullivan started Quote Investigator - a popular website where he traces the origins of well-known sayings. This month, also as Mr O'Toole, he published Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations, a book in which he collected and updated many of the posts from his site and offers new theories on how misquotations form.