For those of you who work in the bureaucracy, whether it be corporate, government, or anything in between, the term will be familiar. "Boilerplate" is generic text, verbiage lifted from one document and applied almost verbatim to another, with only key words and phrases substituted to refer to the new application or purpose. It is done to quickly compose large and complex documents like legislative bills, revisions to the Tax Code, standardized reports or grant applications. You simply get another document that has already been accepted and signed off on and use it as a template to create a similar document. This way you can cover your ass from criticism by pointing to the template and saying "We're only following the model that was accepted by your office last year."

This is how 500 page congressional bills like TARP are hammered out in a weekend; they're not written, they are assembled from standardized parts. Modern editing software is suited for this type of work, it has cut-and-paste capability, and it will automatically number, outline, insert headers, indent, paragraph, change font and text styles, i.e., do all the composition for you, keeping track of the look and feel of the document while the writer (or team of writers) put together the narrative by simply inserting the changes relevant to the new application.

If this sounds suspiciously like the novel composition and history rewriting machines Winston and Julia worked with in 1984 Oceania's Ministry of Truth, you are absolutely right. The fundamental documents of our civilization are now being written by people who are not even reading them, they're just lining up margins and checking bold and italic, color and typesize, and otherwise fulfilling formal requirements of presentation. And why not, nobody is going to read these things anyway, except lawyers sometime in the future.

To make things worse, boilerplated documents are often made from other boilerplated documents, and will in turn be models for still more boilerplated documents. Once a gaffe or error gets into the production line it tends to propagate unchecked forever. Even typos and novel forms of spelling are being immortalized. Also, as people get better at this, and software editors more capable, boilerplate is being extended into areas more and more remote from the original application. You can even buy generic boilerplate now, especially in grant request writing, since the requirements are so impenetrable that no one can know them all.

And it's only a matter of time before software becomes available to do this. Just think, you want to craft a national health care plan? Just buy Wonk 2.0, and it asks you a few hundred questions, and out comes a 1000 page health care bill for the nation. Sort of like a spreadsheet for thought. The same software can then be used to overhaul the criminal code of the State of Ohio, utility rate-setting regulations for the natural gas industry or the formal Order of Battle of the Royal Navy. Like I said, nobody but lawyers is ever going to read it, and they will interpret it the way the highest bidder wants.