‘FAKE news” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary this year.

The October entry came one month before the official start of the General Election campaign period on November 6.

But there’s something especially fitting about that timing, given the “leaflet wars” that have taken place since.

While Brexit and Scottish independence were expected to be amongst the issues to dominate the fraught and fevered rush to polling day, it’s probably fair to say that fake news on campaign pamphlets from major parties was not.

Yet this has become one of the major stories of the snap contest – so much so that the Society of Editors has had to enter the fray and hit back at party political papers presenting themselves as real regional titles.

Imitating genuine publications, the pamphlets used copycat names and promised “exclusive” interviews with party politicians.

Newsquest, which publishes The National amongst many other UK titles, warned the LibDems it would order editors to ignore their campaign after they sent out their “Mid-Hampshire Gazette” in an area covered by its Basingstoke Gazette.

Ian Murray, executive director of the Society of Editors, said: “If a politician or their party can attempt to deliberately mislead you by cloaking their partisan messages in the disguise of an independent and trusted local newspaper, what else are they attempting to camouflage?”

East Dunbartonshire incumbent and LibDem leader Jo Swinson was pressed on her party’s grasp on the truth in a Sky News interview.

Broadcaster Sophy Ridge asked how she could criticise Brexit campaign promises like the debunked “£350 million on the side of a bus” claim while her own party were freely distributing dodgy bar charts. Swinson stated that it was “entirely different” and politics had changed. Dominic Raab was also put under pressure for his party’s online activities after the Conservative press office passed its Twitter account off as a fact-checking platform to declare Boris Johnson the winner of a TV debate.

READ MORE: Lib Dems slammed for 'offensive' campaign material that mimics local newspaper

FactcheckUK – which came with the official blue credibility tick granted to the Tories by Twitter prior to the change – soon spawned a mass of parodies, with The Royle Family’s Ralph Little amongst those taking pot shots at the party for the move.

Twitter said further similar behaviour would be met by “decisive corrective action” and the charity Full Fact attacked the move, accusing the party of “misleading” the public.

Meanwhile, the non-partisan Coalition for Reform in Political Advertising has branded at least 31 campaigns from across the party spectrum as “indecent, dishonest or untruthful” and wants a new regulator set up to tackle the issue.

It found 88% of the Conservative party’s most widely promoted Facebook ads spread claims flagged by independent fact-checkers as incorrect or not entirely correct.

And the LibDems sent out hundreds of potentially misleading ads that used identical unlabelled graphs to claim only they could beat either Labour, the Tories or the SNP “in seats like yours”.

Bringing our attention back to offline material, The National has done its bit to uncover a seemingly never-ending run of misleading election literature sent through letterboxes across the UK. In Glasgow North West, Tory Ade Aibinu used Scotland-wide voting figures from 2017 to claim only he could unseat the SNP’s Carol Monaghan, even though Labour polled second there last time.

In Inverclyde, Labour downplayed the strength of SNP support by using that party’s share of the entire UK vote – 3% – on its material.

And in Stirling, the Greens were outraged after the SNP’s Alyn Smith issued a leaflet using that colour and downplaying his party affiliation.

And it’s unlikely we’ve heard the last of this.

The National understands that the Scottish Political Archive at Stirling University is to turn its attentions to the issue after the polling stations close at 10pm tonight.