Looking for the hidden meaning...

I just finished the last of some freelance proofreading I’ve been working on for a few weeks. Annual reports. Not the most exciting stuff in the universe. I still have words like “amortization” and “consolidated” and “allocated retained earnings” running through my head. I’ve spent hours digesting lilting prose such as, “the core surplus ratio measures available core surplus capital relative to risk-adjusted assets and off-balance-sheet contingencies.” Contiiiiiingencies. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? The sad thing is, I’ve been reading this kind of writing for years, and I really have no idea what most of it means. And even if someone explained it to me, I’d probably just end up forgetting. Because is it really important to me whether or not I understand what allocated retained earnings are? Not really. I just need to make sure proper grammar is used and everything is spelled correctly. Fortunately, it’s not my job to write anything for an annual report. Otherwise, they’d sound more like, “So here’s the thing – we made some money this year. And maybe we lost a little bit, too. But it’ll probably all even out in the end, so no worries.” Actually, maybe I SHOULD write annual reports. They’d be a whole lot shorter…

Another phrase I’ve read a hundred times but I’ve never understood is “know all men by these presents.” Know all men by these presents?? It’s on just about every legal document I’ve ever seen, but I’ve never been able to make sense of it. (But I suppose legal documents really only make sense once they make NO sense whatsoever. Does that make sense? No, of course not.) Even after some research, where I discovered that “know all men by these presents” supposedly means “know all men by the words/statements in this very document,” the phrase STILL makes no sense to me. So are we talking about “presents” as in, present and accounted for? Or is it "present" as in, “I hope I get a lot of birthday presents”? Is the document considered some kind of gift? If the word “presents” in “know all men by these presents” refers to the words and phrases in the document, then my gift shopping just got a lot easier. (Happy birthday! I got you a last will and testament and a power of attorney! It’s the thought that counts…) I’m pretty sure I’ll never really understand “know all men by these presents.” But I DO know that it’s usually spelled correctly when I read it…

When I first started proofreading, I made a big goof by allowing the word “responsibilities” to slip by me with a misspelling. I can’t remember how it was spelled – maybe an I and an L were reversed, or maybe an I was left out altogether (I mean, is it really necessary to have four?) – but however it was spelled, it was printed that way before anyone noticed. And once my boss saw it, she pointed it out to me, in the nicest way possible, with an, “I barely even noticed it myself” attitude. And my first reaction was to think, “hey, that’s a really easy thing to miss.” But then I realized that I was the proofreader. It was my JOB to catch the things that were really easy to miss. Ever since then, “responsibilities” is a kind of obsessive-compulsive word for me. Any time I see it (even if I’m not proofreading), I feel compelled to sound it out, syllable by syllable, to make sure it’s spelled correctly. It’s not responsibilities. It’s re-spon-si-bil-i-ties. I’m not happy until I’m certain that all the I’s are accounted for. Are they all there? Are they, in fact, present? Yes, I know from my nitpicky inspection of the word that all I’s are present. Therefore, I feel I have a right to say that I know all I’s by these presents.

And that’s what I’ll be telling my lawyer to write at the top of my last will and testament.