Reading an Operator's Answer

Three shapes, and only one is evidence

A dated fact. "Vans run every fifteen minutes, five in the morning to eleven at night, seven days." Specific, checkable, and it commits the writer to something. This is what the first group of the worksheet is for.

A general assurance. "We look after our customers' vehicles." Warm, unfalsifiable, and it answers no question that was asked. It gets printed as a quotation and adds nothing.

A deflection. "Subject to availability." Honest, and it means the question is closed. Both silent lines are made of these.

The four tests

Run them on any reply, including one a competitor forwards you:

1. Is there a number or a time in it? A reply with neither is almost never a fact.
2. Does it say when it was true? An undated pattern is a habit, not a commitment.
3. Could it be wrong? If nothing could contradict it, it is not information.
4. Does it answer the question asked, or a nearby easier one? This is the commonest substitution and the hardest to notice.

Why this counter prints replies whole

Summarizing a reply improves it. That is precisely the problem. A tidy paraphrase of a vague assurance reads like a fact, and the reader cannot tell that the tidiness came from this desk rather than from the lot.

So the answers go into the quote as they arrived, in the lot's words, with the date. A reply that reads badly reads badly, and that is information about the lot.

What to do with a general assurance

Ask the same question again with a number in it. "Is the gate attended between ten at night and five in the morning" is answerable; "is the lot safe" is not. Replacing an adjective with a time or a count converts about half of all deflections into facts.

That trick is most of what this counter does, and there is no reason a reader cannot do it directly.

The one thing worth more than any answer

The list of who did not reply. Three lots asked, one answered: that ranking is more useful than the content of the one answer, and it is on every quote.