The Line Beneath the Signature

The word VERIFIED was the problem.

I had written it across the top of my first draft, then sat outside the clerk’s office in the warm sun trying to decide what, exactly, I had verified. The wording on a notice against a source. Not a bridge. Not the crew’s work. Not whether anypony should set hoof on a plank.

The quill hovered over the page. My horn held it steady, though keeping the nib from digging into the paper took more concentration than the word deserved.

I crossed it out.

The ink made a dark line through the middle of the page. I added a note in the margin: “Checked against listed source.” Then I paused. That was accurate, but it sounded like the sort of sentence a clerk put on a form when the real meaning was “please don’t sue me.”

My next attempt came out in a handwriting that sloped downhill.

The sun warmed my back. A cart rattled past at the edge of the street. I had managed half a paragraph in the time it took the town to conduct several transactions, none of them involving my quill. Writing with magic was getting better. Writing neatly, at length, while pretending my horn was a wrist, remained a work in progress.

A shadow crossed the page.

“Howdy, David.” Applejack had stopped beside the steps with a basket hooked over one foreleg. Her hat brim shaded her eyes as she looked down at my papers. “That the form the clerk asked you to make?”

“Attempt number three. The first one accidentally made me the bridge inspector.” I tilted the page so she could read the crossed-out heading. “I’m trying to build in a few fewer accidental careers.”

Applejack set her basket on the step and leaned closer. “What’s the blank there for?”

“Source. Which record I checked the notice against.”

“And this one?”

“Correction. The old wording and the new wording.”

She tapped the empty line at the bottom. “That says ‘Verified by.’ What does that mean to somepony reading it?”

The answer should have been simple. Instead, I looked at the line and saw all the ways it could be misunderstood. A parent with a foal at the bridge. A worker who wanted the road open. A clerk who had to decide whether a notice was ready to post.

“It could mean I checked the wording,” I said. “Or that I’m telling them the bridge is safe.”

Applejack glanced at the page again. “Would you know that second part?”

“No.”

“Then don’t give them a line that says you do.”