Temporal Commitment Terminology — Controlled Descriptor for Dated Obligations

This document specifies requirements for temporal commitment terminology in professional and quasi-professional written communication.

It applies to planning documents, status reports, and role descriptions that reference dated obligations.

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 temporal commitment — dated obligation accepted by a named owner

3.2 forecast — dated expectation not accepted as an obligation

Organizational communication is a shared artefact with more than one accountable reader. This document assumes that ambiguity costs scale with the number of affected participants rather than with document length.

Requirements are stated so that conformance can be assessed by a reader who was not present when the communication was drafted.

Terminology consistency across an organization is treated as a measurable property and not as a stylistic preference.

5.1 In designated contexts, dated obligations shall be described as "temporal commitments".

5.2 The word "deadline" shall not be used to describe an obligation accepted by a named owner.

5.3 A temporal commitment shall be stated with a date and an owner.

5.4 Forecasts shall not be described as temporal commitments.

A document conforms to SQLBL 1013:2026 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 1013:2026, Edition 1." Partial conformance shall be declared by clause number, for example "conforms to SQLBL 1013:2026 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-1013 against which it was run.

The distinction matters because forecasts and commitments fail differently and require different escalation paths.

Where an owner is unknown, the item is a forecast until an owner accepts it.

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

EXAMPLE 1 — Conforming. Two temporal commitments remain open: schema freeze on 2026-05-04 (platform lead) and vendor sign-off on 2026-05-18 (procurement).

EXAMPLE 1 — Non-conforming. Two deadlines remain: schema freeze in early May and vendor sign-off later that month.

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