Chapter 17 answers

Identity: the historical Brown decision and reporter citation were identified. Proposition: the majority passage at page 495 supports the stated historical conclusion. Formatting: the listed components can be compared with the practitioner form. Treatment: no commercial citator check was performed. Receiving requirements: no filing destination was supplied.

These are separate observations. The source check establishes what was inspected, while the passage check connects that source to this particular sentence. The absence of a treatment check does not erase the historical passage; it limits claims about present legal status. The model supplies no court-specific compliance finding.

Writing “Brown verified” loses the distinction between a source match and a complete current-law inquiry. Conversely, marking everything unresolved ignores the identity and passage work actually documented. An audit should preserve both completed work and its boundaries.

Read the sentence through the five decisions: identify Brown, define the historical conclusion, locate page 495, inspect the citation components, and test the stated limits. Which evidence answers each question, and which treatment or receiving-context questions remain open?

Fictional training example — not legal authority.

Status: source unresolved. The citation matcher and general web search produced no match; the relevant court collection has not been searched. Keep the proposed citation out of the supported draft. Next, search the appropriate official collection or docket using the supplied name and identifying information; obtain and inspect the decision if found.

The negative results describe those searches, not every possible repository. If a decision is located, compare its caption and other metadata, then test whether its reasoning supports “always require a signed receipt.” A matching identity cannot validate that universal claim. If the source remains unavailable, revise the claim or use another verified authority.

Do not label the case fabricated solely because two tools failed. Do not let that uncertainty justify keeping it as established support either. The relevant decision is whether the present evidence supports inclusion.

Does the log preserve both unsuccessful searches, the unperformed court search, and the separate need to inspect the asserted rule?

Fictional training example — not legal authority.

“The claimant alleged that delivery occurred on April 1.” The supplied opinion at page 8 is the locator for that attributed account. A sentence stating that the court found delivery would require a further passage actually making or adopting that finding.

The source identifies both speaker and procedural status. The draft changed an allegation into a judicial determination. Restoring “claimant alleged” repairs that change without deciding whether the underlying account is true. A later finding, admission, or other record item would need its own inspection and appropriate attribution.

Adding “according to the opinion” while retaining “the court found” does not fix the mistake: an opinion can report arguments and allegations without accepting them. Nor should the correction say delivery did not occur; the supplied passage does not establish that opposite conclusion.

Underline the corrected sentence’s subject and verb. Do they name the claimant and an allegation, rather than the court and a finding?

Fictional training example — not legal authority.

An accurate quotation is: “A filing is timely if received before noon.” A faithful paraphrase is: The supplied rule makes receipt before noon the stated condition of timeliness.

The draft substituted sending for receipt. Those events can occur at different times, so the alteration changes the condition rather than merely modernizing wording. Compare the whole source sentence and any supplied qualifications; then ensure the surrounding argument no longer treats timely dispatch as sufficient. If the disputed issue is sending versus receipt, the error may affect more than the quotation.

A parenthetical such as “modified” cannot authorize attributing a different substantive rule to the source. Brackets around “sent” would disclose an alteration but would still distort the source’s meaning. Correct the argument as well as the words.

Does the final quotation match “received,” and does every dependent timeliness sentence use that same condition unless another inspected source supplies a different rule?

Run the final id. check in the document’s revised reading order. For each occurrence, identify the immediately preceding authority, verify that id. is permissible in that context, and confirm that any new pinpoint belongs to that authority.

Paragraph movement can insert a different source, remove the original antecedent, or leave a citation following several authorities. A short form that worked before revision may therefore direct the reader elsewhere even though none of its characters changed. The check must use the final sequence, including intervening footnotes or citations relevant under the chosen style.

Searching only for spelling or italic formatting will miss a logically broken reference. A global replacement with a remembered case name can also introduce errors where id. actually refers to a statute or another source. Resolve occurrences individually.

Starting at each id., can you identify its antecedent immediately and recover the intended passage without guessing? Replace uncertain references with an appropriate named short form.

Fictional training example — not legal authority.

Use the supplied ECF coordinate: Exhibit 2 at 4. Retain original page 1 in the source card as a mapping aid. Record that the instruction applies to exhibits in this receiving court and to this filing, and confirm that ECF page 4 contains the relied-on material.

The supplied facts establish an applicable receiving instruction and the two coordinates. A source card may keep both because each can help retrieve or compare a copy; the display should use the coordinate the receiving instruction requests. In live work, preserve the instruction’s source, effective version, and any applicable case-specific order.

Treating the two numbers as interchangeable would send a reader to different places. Calling this a mere house-style choice would also overlook the expressly supplied filing requirement. Do not claim a current real court rule from this fictional packet.

Does the displayed locator say 4, while the internal mapping still records original page 1 and explains which copy was checked?

“Identity checked: the located item matches the recorded authority. Historical-version verification remains incomplete: the text applicable to the relevant event has not been obtained. No conclusion is drawn that the located version governed that event. Next step: retrieve and inspect the applicable historical text and record its effective interval.”

This note preserves the completed identification check without importing it into a different temporal question. A current text may identify the same enactment while containing amendments absent from the earlier version. The document’s claim determines which period matters; a recent download date does not answer that question.

“Source checked” without the version qualification would invite an editor to use the current wording for a historical event. “Nothing verified” would conceal the useful identity work already performed. The narrow status makes the remaining task actionable.

Can another researcher identify what was matched, what version is missing, and what claim must remain limited until the earlier text is inspected?

Rendered-file inspection verifies the document the reader will actually receive. Check that italics and small capitals remain distinct, section and paragraph symbols display correctly, tables retain their rows and headings, citations are not clipped, and links and internal destinations work.

Markdown records intended structure and content. Conversion can alter fonts, wrap a URL awkwardly, move a heading away from its explanation, or break a cross-reference. Those failures affect retrieval and readability even when the source text is correct. Compare substantive counts and destinations as well as appearance.

A successful export command proves that a file was created, not that its pages are usable. Conversely, a visually attractive page does not prove the cited passage supports the claim. Export inspection supplements source and proposition checks rather than replacing them.

Open the delivered format itself. Can the reader recover every required component and follow each tested destination, and are any detected conversion losses repaired in the source or build?

Fictional training example — not legal authority.

Investigate and repair the unsupported holding first, then correct the inconsistent spaces during the presentation pass. Read the cited passage, identify its speaker and scope, and either narrow the sentence, supply genuinely supporting authority, or remove the claim.

The holding error affects the substance attributed to a source. The spacing errors affect presentation. Both deserve correction, but changing spaces cannot establish a missing legal proposition. After a substantive revision, recheck dependent citations and short forms because their context may have changed.

An editor can spend considerable time making an unsupported sentence look authoritative. That is the wrong completion criterion. Do not mark the holding “resolved” merely because its citation now matches the style sheet; record the passage and the repaired assertion.

Write one repair ticket for the unsupported holding: document location, unsupported claim, passage or missing evidence, proposed repair, and closing check. After resolving that meaning problem, can you close each of the three spacing corrections without implying that typography established support?