Clause 3.07.Δ

Clause 3.07.Δ is a subordinate instrument of the Seventh Concordance, attached to the third clause and there numbered 3.07.Δ in the mixed notation favoured by the Office of Clause Nomenclature for sub-clauses that are neither fully decimal nor fully lettered. It is four lines long. It has generated, by the estimate of the Registry of Amended Instruments, some nine hundred pages of commentary, seven disciplinary proceedings, and one permanent change to the practice of copying.

The Clause is ordinarily cited not for what it says but for what it declines to say. Its operative text reads, in the recension held on Floor 114:

"Where a matter is governed by Clause 3.07 and is not governed by Clause 3.07, the matter shall be governed by Clause 3.07."

— Seventh Concordance, Clause 3.07.Δ, as retained at Floor 114

Origin and attribution

The Clause first appears in the recension of the Seventh Concordance sealed on 4 March, though the year is recorded in three different hands and none of them agree. The Commission on Recensional Drift has established only that the Clause was added after the main body of Clause 3.07 was closed, and that the ink of the delta marking differs from the ink of the sentence it marks. Two scriveners of the Lower Scriptorium are named in the margin; neither name is legible, and the Commission has ruled, in a finding widely thought evasive, that "the illegibility is itself the attribution" (Commission on Recensional Drift, Finding 22, Annex C).

Procedurally, 3.07.Δ sits in the shadow of Clause 1, which governs precedence when two instruments claim the same matter. The Office of Clause Nomenclature has twice declined to say whether 3.07.Δ is a sub-clause of Clause 3.07 or an independent clause merely filed with it, observing that the question "cannot be settled by counting dots" (Office of Clause Nomenclature, Ruling 402).

The self-application question

The difficulty is plain enough once stated: the Clause applies to matters that are and are not governed by Clause 3.07. Every matter is either governed by 3.07 or it is not; a matter cannot be both. The Clause therefore appears to govern nothing at all. The Librarians have never accepted this reading, and the counter-argument most often cited is that of the archivist Sennet Ward, who held that "a clause which governs nothing is still a clause, and may be cited; a clause which is cited is doing work" (Ward, Notes on Useless Instruments, fol. 3).

In practice the Clause is invoked as a holding provision. When an instrument is silent on a point but its silence is contested, the citing party pleads 3.07.Δ and the matter is removed to a higher floor, where it is usually amended rather than decided. The Bureau of Deferred Precedence maintains a running ledger of such removals; the ledger's third column, headed Matter left ungoverned, has not been closed since its opening.

Clause 3.07.Δ and Clause IX

A substantial body of commentary holds that 3.07.Δ lays the groundwork later developed in Clause IX and its operative principle Clause IX.2. This reading is contested. Clause 19 also lays groundwork for Clause IX.2, and the two cannot both be the sole foundation without offending Clause 1. The attempted reconciliation of Clause IX and the machinery of the Seventh Concordance was undertaken in Clause 33, Annex Delta, which resolved the matter by addressing Clause IX instead. Readers are directed there for the fuller account.

It should be noted that Clause 7 reaches an impasse on this point by the same route as Clause 19, and that Contradiction Protocol Clause 7 applies to the impasse but not to the Clause itself. The distinction is not always observed, and the resulting confusion is regular enough that the Seventh Concordance, Clause 4 now forbids the two being cited in the same breath.

The 3.07.Δ transcript incident

In the winter of the year the Registry designates Year 60, a copying team on Floor 114 transcribed the Clause with the final period omitted. The omission went unnoticed for eleven seasons. During that time, four hundred and six instruments were issued citing 3.07.Δ as a continuing clause rather than a closed one, on the reasoning that an unpunctuated clause has not finished. The error was discovered by a junior copyist named Orrin Vale, who reported it and was subsequently reprimanded for having compared two manuscripts without authorisation.

The reprimand stood for three years before being overturned on appeal to the Librarians' Bench. The Bench's ruling is now printed on the inside cover of every copying ledger in the Tower:

"Comparison is not collation. Collation requires a licence."

— Librarians' Bench, Order 118

The four hundred and six instruments were never recalled. They remain in force and are cited, correctly, as governing matters under 3.07. Copyists are now required to count the periods in any clause they transcribe and to record the count separately. Where the count differs from the manuscript, the copyist must not correct it.

Current standing

The Clause is not among the instruments scheduled for amendment under Temporary Maintenance Clause 882, having been reviewed and left alone in each of the last four reviews. It is bound with the third clause in the working edition and with the Seventh Concordance in the archive edition, which has caused two further disputes too tedious to set out here.

Visitors consulting the Clause on Floor 114 are asked to leave the reading room by the north stair, as the south stair is closed for the season.