Stet Has A Few Meanings

Thanks to one of my great students he gave me the idea for this article since this occurs in the legal setting all the time.  The concept of Stet in a legal setting takes on a few meanings depending on the situation.

Scenario No. 1:  The attorney has indicated that he wanted to remove a piece of text but attached to the piece of text marked for removal, we see another line and attached to that line the word Stet.  This is the common use of Stet which basically is saying "Leave As Is"

Scenario No. 2:  The attorney brings down a marked up document and that mark-up was made on a hard copy (paper copy) of a black line.  So besides the attorney handwriting, we also see the additions (double underscore) and deletions (overstrike) from the black-line on the hard copy.

1.  In this second scenario, not only will you see the traditional use of Stet, but you will also see the attorney circle let us say four or five paragraphs of deleted text on the hard copy black line and the line emanating from the circled text will say Stet.

2.  Keep in mind that the circled text was five paragraphs of strike through text and that text no longer exists in the present document.  Nevertheless, the attorney is saying to put the text back in.

3.  The strike through text that the attorney wants put back in, most probably is sitting in the prior version of that document since the overwhelming majority of black-lines (document comparisons) are performed between the two most current versions of the document.  It could be otherwise, but not likely,  Either way the footer of the black-line mark-up that you are working on should show the two documents (versions or otherwise) that were compared.

4.  So, in our second scenario, I would send a copy of the prior version to my hard drive so that I am in a position to access the text shown deleted on the hard copy and copy that text back to the current document.  In this way, I don't have to retype the text since the request to place back deleted text can occur multiple times in your mark-up.

5.  The more you work with crowded documents meaning black-line deletions and additions along with attorney handwriting you will develop an eye that separates everything out.

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