TABULATION OF LISTS IN RULESPEAK® – A PRIMER

Using “The Following” Clause

By Ronald G. Ross


Format: 16 pages / PDF
A Business Rule Solutions Primer
FREE DOWNLOAD

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The most powerful, insight-packed 16 pages about how to improve your writing in recent memory. A real breakthrough!

Ever find …

  • People struggling to interpret strings of ORs and ANDs?
  • Difficulties expressing how many conditions must hold true?
  • Lists of conditions you just can’t fit into a decision table?

This Primer introduces tabulation — coordinated lists — to provide huge simplification and improvement in your writing. Here’s how you can simultaneously achieve higher precision and greater readability.

Tabulation lends itself naturally to asking questions and identifying ambiguities, gaps and inconsistencies. Enhance your writing skills by an order of magnitude!

This Primer explains how in down-to-earth, authoritative fashion. It provides practical guidelines and numerous examples.

Tabulation not the same as decision tables. If decision tables would work for these problems you should use them! But they don’t. Find out why.

RuleSpeak is the world’s most familiar set of techniques for expressing textual business logic in precise, business-friendly form. This Primer introduces RuleSpeak 3.0.

Visit the RuleSpeak® website to learn more about this set of guidelines for expressing business rules in concise, business-friendly fashion.

Table of Contents

  • About the Author: Ronald G. Ross
  • About Business Rule Solutions
  • Section 1: Introduction
    • Tabulation in Formal Writing
    • Tabulation in Expressing Business Rules
  • Section 2: Why Use Tabulation
    • Eliminating Ambiguity
      • 1. Use of “and” where “or” is actually meant
      • 2. Potential ambiguity in what is “and’ed”
      • 3. Potential ambiguity in whether “or’s” are exclusive or inclusive
      • 4. Potential ambiguity in strings of “and’s” and “or’s”
    • Enhancing the Readability of Business Rule Statements by Using Tabulation
      • 1. Awkward sentence construction
      • 2. Repetition of business rule keywords
      • 3. Front-Loaded Qualification
    • Grouping Business Rules to Enhance Manageability
      • 1. Many things that must all be true for something
      • 2. Something that must be true if any of multiple conditions is true
  • Section 3: Usage Notes
    • Thresholds
    • Use of “True”Use of “Both” and “Either”
    • Starting a Business Rule Statement with a Threshold
    • Ending Text
    • Double Tabulation
    • Nested Use of “The Following”

Format: 16 pages / PDF
A Business Rule Solutions Primer
FREE DOWNLOAD

Click to download