What to fill in
| Placeholder | What goes there |
|---|---|
| {{SAMPLE}} | twenty real rows, including the ugly ones |
Why it works
Cleaning data badly is worse than not cleaning it, because the errors become invisible. Getting the inventory before the fix means you decide what “clean” means rather than discovering it afterwards.
Asking for the order matters: fixing duplicates before normalising formats produces different results than the other way round.