- What it is
- A saved copy of a notice the market published, complete with its signature block, stored with the date you saved it.
- How you get one
- You save one on an ordinary day when a notice appears and nothing is happening that makes it interesting.
- Where to keep it
- As a plain text file next to your other material, unedited, with the save date in the filename or the first line.
- How it goes wrong
- It gets tidied. Whitespace is reflowed, the signature block is trimmed, and the copy stops matching what was published.
- What fails without it
- A future notice arrives and you have nothing older to hold it against, so you judge it on tone.
- Time to acquire
- A minute, on a day when a notice happens to be published and there is no reason to care.
One example is worth more than a description
You can read a hundred words about what a signed notice looks like and still not recognise a bad one. Sit an unfamiliar notice next to a genuine older one and the differences show up on their own, in the parts nobody thinks to describe: how the block is laid out, where the line breaks fall, what the boilerplate around it says, how the whole thing is worded when nothing dramatic is happening.
That is the entire function of this item. Not to prove anything by itself, but to give you something concrete to compare against instead of a memory of what these usually look like.
Save it on a boring day
The notice worth saving is the least interesting one. Routine, unremarkable, published when nothing is going on. That copy is your baseline precisely because there was no reason for anybody to fake it and no reason for you to be reading it carefully.
Saving a notice for the first time during a crisis produces a baseline made out of the material you were worried about, which is not a baseline at all. Anybody comparing two things they acquired on the same afternoon is comparing nothing.
Save it exactly, then leave it alone
- Take the whole thing, including the signature block and everything between its opening and closing lines.
- Save as plain text. Rich formats reflow content and a reflowed block is a different block.
- Do not fix the line breaks, correct the spelling or remove the trailing blank lines.
- Put the date you saved it somewhere unmissable, following dates.
- Note where you got it from in a line above the copy, outside the notice itself.
What the saved copy cannot do
It does not verify anything. A saved notice is a sample, and comparing a new notice to it tells you whether they look alike, which is a starting point and not a conclusion. The actual checking rests on key material, which is the subject of the market fingerprint and, on your side, your own key.
It also cannot tell you what a genuine notice would say in circumstances that have not happened before. A market that has only ever published routine notices gives you no baseline for an unusual one. Knowing the limits of your own sample is part of holding it.
Why it holds its value
This one keeps. An old notice does not become less genuine as it ages, and a baseline from a long time ago is arguably better than a recent one, since there was even less reason for anybody to have interfered with it. What ages is its coverage. A sample from years back may not reflect how notices are laid out now, and a comparison that turns up differences may be showing you drift rather than trouble.
The sensible thing is to keep the old one and add a new one occasionally, dating each. A short series is more informative than any single copy, because it shows you what normal change looks like.
Questions that come up
Why keep the date I saved it rather than the date on the notice?
Both are useful and the save date is the one that can be trusted, because it is yours. A date printed inside a document is a claim made by whoever produced the document. The date you wrote when you took the copy is a fact about your own filing, and it establishes that your sample predates whatever you are now comparing it to.
Where should I get the notice from?
From wherever the market publishes them, saved directly rather than copied out of somebody else's reposting of it. A repost has passed through hands, may have been reformatted on the way, and cannot serve as a baseline for layout. The reference page on independent sources goes into what different kinds of source can and cannot establish.
Is one saved notice enough?
It is enough to be useful and a small series is better. One copy tells you what a notice looked like on one day. Two or three from different times show you which parts stay the same and which drift, and the parts that stay the same across years are the parts most worth looking at closely in something new.