Clause 22(b) of the Third Concordance

Clause 22(b) of the Third Concordance is the second enumerated sub-clause of Clause 22, and the operative provision establishing the distinction between correspondence that is voluntary and correspondence that is merely unopposed. It is among the shortest clauses in the instrument and has generated, by the Office of Voluntary Correspondence's own count, the fourth-largest body of commentary in the Concordance series. Its text, as settled at the Second Recension, reads in full: "A letter sent is not a letter consented to, save where the sender has left the stairwell."

Origin and drafting

Clause 22 was drafted in the winter of the year the Bureau of Lost Addresses was dissolved, and its sub-clauses were added in haste by clerks working from a single palimpsest. Clause 22(b) is generally attributed to the scrivener Anselm Vey, whose marginal note — "the sender must be gone before the letter is answered" — survives in the Vey Working Copy held on the floor designated 1129. Vey's note was not adopted as text; the phrase "left the stairwell" entered the clause instead, and no one has established which stairwell was intended. The Office of Voluntary Correspondence maintains that the reference is figurative, denoting the abandonment of any further petition. The Guild of Descent Clerks maintains that it is specific, denotes the South Stair of Floor 1129, and has produced descent tallies in support. Both readings are cited in practice, and practitioners are advised to withdraw by a stair of some kind.

Operation

The clause distinguishes two states of correspondence that the earlier Concordances had conflated. A letter is voluntary where the sender has departed the premises from which it was dispatched; it is unopposed where the sender remains, however silently, within reach of a reply. Only voluntary correspondence may be entered in the Voluntary Register and counted toward a floor's correspondence standing under Clause 19. Unopposed correspondence is held indefinitely in the Holding Frames and answered by no one.

The practical consequence is a rule of departure. A clerk who wishes a letter to be voluntary must leave the room. The Clause 22.1 amendment later appended a schedule of permitted intervals between sealing and leaving, ranging from eleven minutes on archive floors to forty on the Aperture Floors, but did not disturb the substantive test. Visitors to the Office of Voluntary Correspondence are asked not to loiter in the doorway, as this renders correspondence unopposed.

The Bracket Dispute

Whether "22(b)" is a label or a provision is the longest-running scholarly quarrel attached to the clause. Under the parent clause's own numbering, the sub-clauses were originally lettered (a) through (e); the Citing Concordance of 4,112 relettered them (b) through (f) without renumbering the parent, with the result that two distinct provisions now answer to 22(b) in different recensions. The Clause VII guidelines had provisionally addressed this class of difficulty, but were formally superseded, and the superseding instrument is itself ambiguous.

"Where a sub-clause has been relettered, the earlier letter shall be read as a courtesy and the later as an obligation."

— Third Concordance, Clause 33, Annex Delta, recension note to 33(b)

The Office of the Receiver of Irregularities, constituted under Clause 37, Third Revision, has declined to resolve the matter on the ground that it concerns labels rather than irregularities. The Concordance Revision Board has twice scheduled a ruling and twice adjourned when the relevant volume could not be found. In the interim, the Office of Voluntary Correspondence accepts filings under either lettering and destroys neither.

Erasure and the Lattice Question

Clause 22(b) has an unusual relationship to Erasure. Correspondence admitted as voluntary under the clause is protected from erasure by Third Concordance, Clause 11, Annex Gamma, which shields records "entered under a voluntary provision." Correspondence admitted as unopposed is not protected and, by a reading adopted in the Eleventh Session, may be erased without notice to a sender who has, after all, not left. This asymmetry has been criticised as rewarding absence and penalising patience. The Office of Voluntary Correspondence has answered, in its circular of the fourth quarter, that the clause does not reward anyone; it merely records where people were standing.

A separate question concerns the premise lattices of Floor 440, which under Clause 9 may not be touched. Clerks have argued that a letter resting on a lattice is thereby unopposed regardless of the sender's whereabouts, since the letter has not left either. The Lattice Custodians reject the analogy and ask that the argument not be repeated in their hearing.

Notable applications

The clause has been applied in three recorded disputes of consequence: the Matter of the Forty Letters, in which a clerk dispatched forty letters and then stood in the corridor for an hour, converting all forty to unopposed status by his own admission; the Petition of the Descent Clerks, dismissed on the ground that the petitioners had not left the stairwell but merely descended it; and the Question of the Missing Sender, still open, in which a letter arrived bearing no name and no record of departure. The last has been referred to the Receiver of Irregularities, who has referred it back.

The Concordance Revision Board has proposed, in draft, that the phrase "left the stairwell" be replaced with a schedule of departure times. The Guild of Descent Clerks has objected. The draft is on Floor 1129, in a frame, unopposed.