Proofreading

The proofreading feature tries to find (potential) technical mistakes in your document, e.g. missing definitions, left-over placeholders and hardcoded numbers.

Let us know if you have good ideas for other relevant issues the software should spot!

Missing definitions for capitalised terms

This issue flags situations where a capitalised term (or group of capitalised words) is used more than once in the document, yet is not defined in a definition list or through an "inline" definition in a paragraph.

Essentially, this issue is identical to the warnings you can see in the Capitalised Terms panel of the Definitions feature.

To ensure that your document is analysed in seconds (instead of minutes), ClauseBuddy uses a special type of fast artificial intelligence (AI). This AI will make mistakes, e.g. flagging common words that humans would not qualify as defined terms.

Unused defined terms

This issue flags a situation where a definition is inserted (either in a definition list, or as an "inline" definition in a paragraph), but that defined term is subsequently not used outside of the definition list / definitional clause.

Essentially, this issue is identical to the warnings you can see in the Definition List and the Inline Definitions panels of the Definitions feature.

Highlighted words or placeholders

This issue flags all paragraphs in which [placeholders], highlights (in yellow, green, red, cyan, ...) or blobs (fat bullets) are still present.

These paragraphs are flagged by the proofreading module, because they may indicate a mistake from the author.

Invalid cross-references

This issue flags technically broken cross-references in a document, i.e. cross-references that look fine in the Word-document, but will turn into Error! Reference source not found when being printed or updated.

By way of example: the following paragraph contains a cross-reference that pointed to a certain paragraph that was subsequently removed from the document. Due to the fact that MS Word only updates cross-references when being explicitly requested (e.g., by selecting all text and hitting F9 in Windows, or by right-clicking and choosing "Updating Fields" on Mac/Windows), the cross reference looks fine ...

... until you print or update it, and you then realise the cross-reference is actually technically broken.

Be aware that ClauseBuddy only performs a technical check of the document, i.e. whether a cross-reference will turn into an "Error! Reference source not found" error when printed or updated.

ClauseBuddy does not currently check hard-coded cross-references (i.e., cross-references that were manually typed in, instead of using a "real" cross-reference in MS Word), and does not perform a "semantic" check of a cross-reference (e.g., when a paragraph refers to "... the pricing, as set forth in clause 6.1", while in reality clause 6.1 contains a notices clause.

Hardcoded paragraph numbers

This issue flags paragraphs that have a "hardcoded" number assigned to them (i.e. numbers literally typed in as such), instead of using MS Word's automatic numbering system.

As every legal expert knows, those hardcoded numbers can lead to frustrations. The most problematic situation is when most paragraphs in the document are assigned an automatic numbering, yet a few of them (typically newly inserted by some counterparty's lawyer) are using hardcoded numbers. ClauseBuddy will easily flag those situations.