Fiction vs History

Fiction and history share many similar traits. They can both be ways to understand the past. They are both a byproduct of human beings and the "stories" that they create. The difference is that fiction is a fabricated story and history is a story with some evidence to support that it happened in reality and wasn't just made up. One of my sources says that "even if [newspaper articles] slant the truth they are intended to be read as factual" which makes them nonfiction (www.creative-writing-now.com). Maybe exaggerating the truth becomes history itself so that is why it isn't fiction? Who can say for certain?
Another difference is the root of the words themselves. History comes from a Greek word and fiction comes from Latin. The Greek word Historia was used to mean a person who made judgement based on facts from investigations (http://www.whatishistory.org/). Fictio is the Latin word that fiction comes from and means "molding" or "fashioning" (https://www.britannica.com/art/fiction-literature). From the definitions of the root words it is made clear that history is used to express events that happen in the world based on facts that could be used as evidence in support of those events. Fiction was never meant to have facts supporting whether the events in the fabricated story actually happened or not. The reason the two can be confused is because of the truth that there are documents used as evidence in support of history that were created with the intent to deceive. It is in this area that fiction and history tend to blend together and get confused.

• http://www.whatishistory.org/
• https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fiction
• https://www.britannica.com/art/fiction-literature
• https://www.creative-writing-now.com/what-is-fiction.html