How we work

The method behind a single handbook page, set out in the order the work actually happens.

Method decides whether a handbook is worth anything. This is the order the work runs in.

One page, one filing question

Work starts from a single question, phrased the way a compliance officer would phrase it rather than the way a search box collects it. Where a page already answers that question, the existing page gets extended. Two pages chasing the same question damage each other and confuse whoever arrives, so the archive keeps one page per question and sharpens it.

Sources before prose

The sources are gathered before any prose exists. Most federal procedures take three layers, and often a fourth.

Five is the floor, seven the ceiling. Where five cannot be found, the subject is not yet one this handbook can explain, and it waits until the material exists.

Rule, exception, consequence

Rule first. Exception second. Then the consequence for a filing already due. Section headings name what sits inside them and are never numbered. Where an answer turns on a fact, the fact gets named and the sentence stays firm.

Figures and comparisons

These subjects run on numbers. Days to protest. Parts per million. Hours behind the wheel. The dollar threshold for a set-aside. The steps in a grievance chain. Every figure is stated exactly and attributed to whatever fixes it. Each article carries one comparison table, since routes, forums and categories land faster in rows than in prose. A table that merely repeats the paragraph above it gets deleted.

Sentences stay short and paragraphs hold one idea. Nothing is padded to reach a length. A page that has said what it needs stops.

Two things kept out

Prediction is the first. How an agency or a tribunal would resolve one particular matter cannot be known from a general page. Pretending otherwise is how a reader gets misled fastest. Exhortation is the second. No page ends by pointing at a lawyer. Where counsel usually determines the result, the point is made in the sentence that warrants it, and the page carries on.

Naming an unsettled question

Open questions run through all ten subjects. The circuits divide over an exhaustion test. Agency guidance is all that exists. A compact has never been construed against the facts now sitting in front of a state engineer. A statute written for one technology gets applied to another. Each page names which of those it is dealing with. A firm sentence laid over an open question is the worst thing this kind of page can carry, because it is the sentence somebody acts on without checking.

Checks the build enforces

A file is refused mechanically before anybody reads it for sense. Rejection follows from a short source list, an absent jurisdiction label, too few or too many sections, a British spelling, a duplicated heading identifier, a photograph already used elsewhere, an uncredited image, or a date stamp sitting in the file or in its metadata. Internal links have to resolve. Alt text is checked on every photograph. The archive is scanned for two pages answering one question.

Machines cannot establish that a legal statement is true. The citation list carries that burden. It exists so this handbook can be tested rather than believed.

Revision

A page changes when the rule under it changes, when a reader proves something wrong, or when a passage keeps being read backward. The change goes into the page itself. Where the substance shifts, the page prints the new position and notes that it moved. Starting that process is covered at corrections, the rules the pages answer to at editorial standards, and what this publication is at about.