Manual of Tacit Protocol

The Manual of Tacit Protocol is the governing instrument of unspoken and partially spoken procedure on the floors administered under Charter of Tacit Understanding. First circulated in a recension attributed to the Chamber of Tacit Consensus, it fixes the standardized gesture sets by which business otherwise conducted in silence may be performed, and it permits variants of those gestures only on Day 7. It should not be confused with the Silence Protocol, which forbids communication, nor with the Manual of Custodial Protocol, which governs the handling of objects rather than the restraint of speech.

Scope and placement in the manual series

The Manual does not stand alone. Its gesture schedules are read alongside the Manual of Adjudicative Protocol, whose Section 4 establishes Initial Scrutiny for disputes arising from misread gestures, and its rest-day tolerances are cross-referenced in the Provisional Manual of Epistemic Protocol. Where a gesture stands in a document context it is governed by the Manual of Referential Protocol, and where a gesture is replaced by a written sign the substitution is handled under the replacement mechanics of the Manual of Hydrographic Protocol. The Chamber's practice of scheduling variant days is set out in the Ordinance of Tacit Acclamation.

The gesture sets

The Manual recognises eleven primary gestures, each with a duration and an amplitude band. The sets are numbered I to XI and are performed in sequence when a full protocol sentence is required. Gesture VII — the vertical inclination of the palm — carries the general sense of deferral and is prohibited in rooms with a ceiling below two and a half metres, owing to the clearance required above the extended wrist. Gesture XI is performed once per session and may not be repeated, irrespective of whether the first performance was observed.

The Day 7 variant

The Manual's most litigated provision is its rest-day clause. On Day 7 the standard gesture sets are suspended and variants are permitted, provided only that they remain recognisable to a second party who has read the same recension. This licence has been interpreted narrowly by some and broadly by others. The Manual of Adjudicative Protocol addresses the resulting disputes, though the Manual of Custodial Protocol annotates the same clause with a note reading, in the margin hand of a curator whose name is not recorded, "revision of the variant is itself a variant." The annotation has never been formally adopted and has never been formally repudiated.

Case of the Fourth Landing, winter

On the fourth landing, in the winter of the year the catalogue records as 9-epsilon, a clerk performed Gesture VII during a Day 7 assembly and was reported for procedural error. The adjudicating Librarian found that the variant was valid but the duration non-conforming, and imposed a fine of two measures of ink. The clerk's grievance, filed the following week, argued that the Manual nowhere fixes durations for Day 7 at all. The grievance was upheld. The ink was not returned.

Recensions and dispute

The Manual exists in at least three recensions. The Chamber of Tacit Consensus administers the third, while the Charter of Tacit Understanding cites a recension whose numbering does not correspond to any surviving copy. A longstanding disagreement concerns whether Gesture III and Gesture IV may be performed simultaneously. The Manual of Unadorned Process takes the view that simultaneity is impossible, as the finger-taxonomy required by each is exclusive. The Manual of Phantasmal Bookkeeping takes the opposite view and gives a worked example. Both manuals cite the same clause, and neither has amended it.

"Two gestures performed at once are one gesture of a composite name. The composite is not a variant, and the Day 7 licence does not reach it."

— Manual of Phantasmal Bookkeeping, Schedule 6

Materials and maintenance

The Manual is printed on unbleached stock and is issued with a sealing cord, replaced every eleven years. Copies are checked against the third recension annually, in the presence of two clerks, one of whom reads aloud and one of whom counts. No copy may be consulted without the prior registration of the reader's left hand at the desk, a requirement introduced after the incident on the fourth landing and never repealed. The Manual is not carried on stairways.