A form can demand a permanent answer from a temporary situation.

GRATITUDE

WHAT THIS MEANS

Forms want fixed answers. Situations are rarely fixed, especially the ones people are filling forms about, and the box requires you to declare a state that will have changed by the time it is read. You end up choosing the least wrong permanent version of something in motion, and that version becomes your official record. The mismatch is built into the instrument.

Where a form allows any free text, use it to note that the situation is changing. Keep a copy of what you said and the date. And if you design forms, an option for temporary or in progress costs nothing and prevents a great deal of later correction.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

Which box did you tick that stopped being true soon after?

MORE IN COMMUNICATION & LANGUAGE

Free, with nothing to buy inside it.