Materiality Modifier Standard — Restrictions on Non-Quantitative Intensifiers

This document specifies requirements for materiality modifier standard in professional and quasi-professional written communication.

It applies to assessment-bearing prose, being prose intended to influence a decision about the author or the subject.

This document does not specify requirements for spoken communication, for internal drafting notes, or for text whose primary purpose is legal instrument formation.

The following documents are referred to in the text in such a way that some or all of their content constitutes requirements of this document.

For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For undated references, the latest edition of the referenced document applies.

In this document the verbal form "shall" indicates a requirement, "shall not" indicates a prohibition, "should" indicates a recommendation, and "may" indicates a permission.

Terms and definitions given in SQLBL 1000 and the following apply.

3.1 non-quantitative intensifier — modifier that increases apparent magnitude without introducing a measurable claim

3.2 materiality — property of affecting a decision if known

Professional communication is evaluated by the receiving party under conditions of limited attention and limited context. Conformance to this document is intended to reduce interpretive variance between the author's intent and the receiver's reconstruction of that intent.

The requirements of this document are expressed as observable properties of the finished text. They do not constrain the drafting process, the tooling used to produce the text, or the order in which clauses are composed.

Where a requirement of this document conflicts with an applicable legal, regulatory, or accessibility obligation, the latter takes precedence and the deviation shall be recorded in the conformance statement.

5.1 The word "very" shall not appear in assessment-bearing prose.

5.2 Where an intensifier is required, the modifier "materially" shall be used.

5.3 The modifier "materially" shall be used not more than three times per thousand words.

5.4 Where neither omission nor substitution preserves the intended meaning, the claim should be restated quantitatively.

A document conforms to SQLBL 1008:2026 where every requirement expressed with the verbal form "shall" in Clause 5 is satisfied and no requirement expressed as "shall not" is violated.

Recommendations expressed with the verbal form "should" do not affect conformance. Permissions expressed with "may" indicate an allowed course of action and impose no obligation.

Conformance claims shall take the form: "This document conforms to SQLBL 1008:2026, Edition 1." Partial conformance shall be declared by clause number, for example "conforms to SQLBL 1008:2026 Clauses 5.1 and 5.2 only."

Conformance may be assessed manually or by an automated checker. Where an automated checker is used, the assessment record shall identify the checker and the catalog release of SQLBL-1008 against which it was run.

The prohibition targets a specific failure mode: intensifiers that survive editing because they are cheap to insert and hard to falsify.

"Materially" carries an implicit decision-relevance claim and should therefore not be applied to preferences.

Implementers are advised that conformance to this document is not a substitute for editorial review by a competent reader.

EXAMPLE 1 — Conforming. The revised schedule materially reduced handoff delay between the two teams.

EXAMPLE 1 — Non-conforming. The revised schedule very much reduced handoff delay between the two teams.

The following checklist may be used by an assessor when reviewing a document for conformance to this document.