Weekly Journal
WK-030
A Week Spent Entirely on One Paragraph
The one on the certificate
Week
One task
One paragraph, rewritten eleven times, on a document most owners will read exactly once. It is the only text in the system that has to survive the brand.
What It Says
That the number on the certificate identifies a specific object, that the record of it is intended to outlast the company, and what a holder should do if the company is gone.
Why It Took a Week
The last clause is the difficult one. Everything else is a claim about the present; that one is a promise about a future in which nobody is left to keep it.
The eleventh version is shorter than the first by half and says one more thing.
What Was Cut
Every sentence that was reassuring rather than useful.
A week is a strange unit for this work — long enough to feel wasteful on one paragraph, short enough that the paragraph is still not finished. Both were true here.
Week
- Focus
- One paragraph.
- Versions
- Eleven.
- Shipped
- The eleventh.
- Length
- Half the first, one clause longer in substance.