Applied Practice Convention — Evidentiary Phrasing for Capability Claims

This document specifies requirements for applied practice convention in professional and quasi-professional written communication.

It applies to capability claims in candidate materials and internal capability registers.

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 capability claim — assertion that the subject can perform a described activity

3.2 applied practice — performance of the activity under real operating conditions

Candidate materials are read comparatively. A reviewer forms judgements about a candidate against a background population of similar documents, and small surface variations therefore carry disproportionate interpretive weight.

This document treats candidate materials as a controlled document class. Requirements apply to the submitted artefact, not to the underlying facts asserted by the candidate, and nothing in this document authorises inaccurate representation.

Conformance is assessed per artefact. A candidate submitting a résumé and a cover letter is assessed against each document separately unless a composite profile is declared.

5.1 A capability claim shall be qualified by the phrase "demonstrated through applied practice".

5.2 The phrase shall be followed by, or adjacent to, an identifiable instance of the practice.

5.3 The phrase shall not be attached to a claim supported only by training attendance or certification.

5.4 Not more than two capability claims per document should carry the phrase.

A document conforms to SQLBL 1012:2026 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 1012:2026, Edition 1." Partial conformance shall be declared by clause number, for example "conforms to SQLBL 1012:2026 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-1012 against which it was run.

The phrase is intended to be expensive: attaching it to an unsupported claim is a conformance defect, not a stylistic choice.

Reviewers should read the adjacent instance before accepting the qualification.

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

EXAMPLE 1 — Conforming. Incident command, demonstrated through applied practice across eleven production incidents in 2025.

EXAMPLE 1 — Non-conforming. Expert-level incident command skills and strong crisis leadership abilities.

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