Yewwl demands that the Lord of the Volcano give her a letter authorizing her and her followers to act for the clans. The letter is "...undated as was usual..." (p. 123)
Why are such important letters usually undated? Does it not matter that such a letter might be very old, out of date, no longer applicable etc? Perhaps the most important information on any document is its date. Someone once showed me an article cut out of a newspaper but with no note as to its date. When I pointed out this omission, he replied, "You are interested in that. I'm not." I had to say, "You are interested in the content of the article but not in how many days, weeks, months or years out of date it might be? The situation that it describes might have changed and changed again since this article was published. Thus, it might now be completely misleading to show anyone the article as if assuming that it describes a current or at least very recent state of affairs."
I apologise for haste in posting but am about to eat before going out to the Gregson Institute which has been mentioned here (scroll down) before.
Fair winds forever.
1 comment:
kaor, paul!
exactly, dates are important, in both private and official letters and documents. e.g., in the UK official acts and statutes are now being dated with gregorian AD dates and by the first year of the reign of Charles III.
Sean
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