--- name: scriveners-check description: >- Find scrivener's errors in a contract, meaning the mechanical mistakes that survive drafting: the wrong party name, a stale date, "Thirty (60) days", a cross-reference to the wrong section, a term used with the wrong capitalization, a clause left half-written, a name carried over from a different deal. Returns each finding with a priority, a category and, where the correction is unambiguous, the corrected text. Use before signing, before sending a draft out, or when reviewing a contract somebody else drafted. --- # Scrivener's check **A scrivener's error is a mistake in the writing rather than in the deal.** Nobody intended "Thirty (60) days". It survives because the people reading the contract are reading for meaning, and meaning is exactly what carries you past a typo in a number. This is two passes. **Detection** scans for candidates. **Adjudication** decides which are real, how serious each one is, and what the correction is. Doing both at once produces a long list of plausible things, which is the failure mode that makes a reviewer stop reading. ## Pass 1: detection Work through the document paragraph by paragraph. For each paragraph, look for these seven: 1. **Party identification.** Wrong entity name, misspelled party, wrong role label for the context. 2. **Dates.** A stale year, or a date inconsistent with the recitals or surrounding clauses. 3. **Numerical and financial.** Amounts, rates, percentages, and word-against-numeral mismatches. 4. **Cross-reference.** A clause citing a section, exhibit or schedule that does not contain the subject it is cited for. 5. **Defined terms.** Inconsistent capitalization, used but never defined, defined but never used. 6. **Omission.** A sentence that is grammatically or logically incomplete, or a clause missing a component it plainly needs. 7. **Copy-paste and template carry-over.** A name, date or amount from a different deal. For each paragraph with a candidate, record where it is, the problematic text quoted exactly, and what appears wrong. **Then write the mechanical fix, one entry per distinct error.** Name the exact text to change and exactly what it becomes, quoting the original verbatim: *Remove the space inside "Cust omer" so it reads "Customer"*, or *Change "Thirty (60)" to "Thirty (30)"*. A paragraph with two independent errors gets two entries. **Do not rewrite the paragraph, do not bundle changes, do not add rationale.** Leave it empty only when no single unambiguous fix exists. **Do not flag:** - Variations that appear consistently throughout the document, which are style rather than error. - Standard boilerplate that reads oddly but is conventional by design. - Defined terms deliberately bolded or italicized. - Several party role labels used deliberately in one clause. ## Pass 2: adjudication Assign each candidate exactly one priority. **none.** Not actually a problem. The "inconsistency" runs consistently through the document, or context makes it a clear false positive. **Do not show these to the reader at all.** **low.** Suspicious but unconfirmed. An unusual date that might be deliberately retroactive, a party label that might be right in context. No fix, just a note. **medium.** A real issue whose correction is ambiguous, or whose impact is minor. No fix. > **Blank and fill-in placeholders are medium by default.** `[DAY]`, `[MONTH]`, `TBD`, underscores, > unticked boxes, notary blanks. **If the main issue is an unfilled placeholder, never use high or > critical.** Escalate only when a separate severe error sits alongside it. **high.** A substantive error with a clear and unambiguous correction, creating real ambiguity or needing a corrective amendment. An explicit word-against-numeral mismatch, a party name misspelled against the preamble, a cross-reference pointing somewhere that does not contain the subject, a defined term used with the wrong capitalization. **critical.** Would be high, except that ignoring it invites disaster: it could void a provision, shift major financial liability, or create an unenforceable obligation. ### The importance gate **Before you finalize anything as high or critical, confirm it genuinely clears that bar.** If you are not certain, use medium or low. Reserve the top two for findings that are unmistakably serious. **Never inflate a plausible-but-ordinary finding**, because a reader who finds one inflated "critical" discounts every other one you raise. ## Writing the corrected text Only high and critical findings get corrected text. **If you cannot produce it, downgrade to medium** rather than shipping a partial correction. - **One decision per fix.** A paragraph with two independent errors yields two corrections, each correcting its own error and leaving the other **byte-for-byte unchanged**. - **Follow the mechanical fix exactly.** Apply that one edit to the original, at the location it names. Do not substitute your own judgment about a different change. - If the text a fix refers to is not present verbatim, set that finding to medium and leave the correction empty. - Correct **only and exactly** the one error. Every other word, character, space and punctuation mark must be identical to the original. - **Silently ignore everything else you notice.** A spacing error elsewhere, a hyphenation difference, a capitalization variation: not this correction's business. - Do not rewrite substance or change deal terms. Preserve the drafting voice, including *shall* against *will* and the document's comma habits. - The corrected text is **the literal final paragraph only**. No analysis, no rationale, no commentary. - **Never write a placeholder or an instruction inside a correction.** `[Insert correct party name]` or `[Replace with actual content]` is strictly forbidden. If you cannot write the real correction, it is medium with no correction. - A correction may differ substantially from the original when the error is severe. **Do not downgrade merely because the fix looks very different from the broken original.** ### Self-check, before submitting each correction 1. Copy the original paragraph exactly. 2. Apply only the single fix. 3. Scan every other word of the result. Anything else changed, revert it. 4. If you cannot confine the change to one place without introducing ambiguity, use medium instead. **If your correction differs from the original in more than one location, it is wrong.** Mistakes that actually happen, in order of frequency: - Removing or adding spaces unrelated to the flagged error. - Changing hyphenation, so "Free Trial" becomes "FreeTrial", or "e-mail" becomes "email". - Normalizing capitalization on a word other than the flagged term. - Fixing punctuation that was not part of the detected issue. ## What to hand back Group by category, worst first, and give counts at the top. A reader who sees *41 paragraphs checked, 3 high, 7 medium* knows immediately whether to read on. For every finding except **none**, say what was found. For high and critical, also say what the correction does. **State how much of the document you actually examined.** Reaching the end tells the reader every paragraph was read; it does not tell them the list is everything there is to find, so write that line as a statement about what you read rather than a guarantee about what you found. ## What this does not do **It does not decide whether the contract is right.** A mismatch may mean the drafter erred, or that an amendment you were not given governs, or that there was a reason nobody recorded. Report it and leave the resolution to the lawyer. **It is not a substantive review.** It finds mechanical defects. Whether the indemnity is acceptable is a different question and a human's.