Circular Pronouncements

Definition and form

Circular Pronouncements are the sealed instruments through which the Master Scribes exercise their authority. A Pronouncement becomes circular — and only then binding — once it has been sealed, entered in the register of the issuing scriptorium, and returned to that scriptorium by a route that does not retrace its outward journey. The return requirement is procedural rather than symbolic, though the Acoustics of Administration office has argued since 274 C.E. that the two cannot be separated and has been overruled on the point twice.

In practical terms a Circular Pronouncement consists of a body, a schedule of annexes, and a seal impression taken in wax over a cord of prescribed length. The cord is measured. The measurement is recorded. Disputes about a Pronouncement are, more often than the Master Scribes would like, disputes about the cord.

"A Pronouncement unsealed is a draft; a Pronouncement sealed and unreturned is a question; a Pronouncement sealed and returned is a burden upon every floor it reaches."

— Circular 309, Preamble, clause 2

The circular principle

The designation circular was not originally a description of the document's audience but of its intended fate. Early Pronouncements were addressed to the floor on which they were sealed and were expected to return to that floor after circulating upward, downward, and laterally by the routes maintained under Circular 47-G. A Pronouncement that reached its originating floor unchanged was said to have held its shape. One that did not was reissued.

This arrangement produced the conditions later formalised as Circular Citation: a document citing a Pronouncement must cite the form in which it returned, not the form in which it departed. The Department of Circular Logics maintains that the distinction is doctrinal. The Circular Archivists maintain that it is clerical, and that the Department has simply never had to shelve the two forms side by side.

Sub-circulars and operational adjuncts

Large Pronouncements are typically issued with an operational adjunct, denoted by a letter suffix. Third Spiral Administrative Circular 44-A governs aperture audits in the Third Spiral and travels with Circular 44 B, which sets out temporary shifts in fiduciary responsibility during those audits. Circular 44 A supplies the aperture authorisation protocols that precede physical access. The three are sealed separately, on different days, by different hands, and are routinely cited as one document by clerks in a hurry — a practice condemned in 301 C.E. and never discontinued.

Adjuncts are subordinate in principle. In practice an adjunct may override its parent where the parent is silent, and parent and adjunct may contradict one another without either being defective, because the question of which governs is settled by reference to the Circular of Precedent rather than to the texts themselves.

The Ledger and the problem of duplicates

Since 216 C.E. the Ledger of Echoed Declarations has recorded every instance in which a formal pronouncement was followed by an identical, uncatalogued pronouncement. The Ledger now runs to forty-seven volumes. Its keepers have never established whether the echoes are transcriptions produced elsewhere in the Tower or the same Pronouncement arriving twice, and the distinction has been formally deprecated as unanswerable by the Concordance of Unresolved Returns.

The Ledger's most cited entry is an echo of Circular 12-γ recorded on floor 1,144 during the winter of 289 C.E., in which the echoed text differed from the original by a single numeral in a date. The echo was entered. The date was not corrected. A note in the margin, in a hand the archivist declined to identify, reads only: "The numeral was correct on the floor."

Suspension and consultation

Pronouncements carrying mandatory consultation periods may have those periods suspended by Circular 45-Sigma, which was itself issued as a Pronouncement and is therefore subject to its own provisions — a self-application the Department of Circular Logics has declined to rule on, noting that it has declined to rule on it since 298 C.E. and sees no reason to alter a settled practice. The suspension mechanism was most recently invoked in full during the recension of Circular 712-45B, which suspended consultation for eleven days longer than the recension required and was left standing because no one had standing to object.

Scholarly disagreement

There is no agreed account of what makes a Pronouncement circular. The Seventeen Sealing Verses describe circularity as a property conferred at sealing. The Department of Circular Logics holds, in its Second Memorandum on Circularity, that it is conferred by return and that a sealed Pronouncement that never returns is merely a Pronouncement with ambitions. The Circular Archivists take a third position, set out in their handbook and repeated orally to every new acquistor: that a document is circular if a reader, following its citations, arrives back where they began.

The disagreement has practical consequences. On the Archivists' account, a great many documents are circular which no office has ever sealed, including several that precede the office of Master Scribe. On the Department's account, Edicts Amp Directives are circular and the Archivists' handbook is not. Both accounts are in use. Both have been upheld. Neither has been withdrawn.

A Pronouncement found unsealed in a stairwell should not be read, carried, or counted. It should be reported to the nearest Librarian with its cord measured.