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The Incredible Shrinking P


Don Mansfield

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I read a lot of rules—proposed rules, interim rules, final rules, second proposed rules, second interim rules, etc. In fact, I decided a year or so ago that I would read all new rules in the Federal Register that affect the FAR or DFARS (I’m only a few rules behind as of this writing). In my reading, I noticed a strange phenomenon that went unexplained in the Federal Register notices—the letters “P” and “S” were getting smaller. That is, citations to FAR parts and subparts were being changed from “FAR Part X” and “FAR Subpart X.1” to “FAR part X” and “FAR subpart X.1” (Notice the lower-case “p” and “s”). I wondered what was going on. Who decided that lower case “p” and “s” were now correct? Why wasn’t the FAR Council following its own rules in the FAR Drafting Guide or at FAR 1.105-2( c)(3) (recently amended—more on that later), which both showed the correct way to cite a part or subpart is with an upper-case “P” or “S.”

I also submit a lot of public comments. My comments usually are usually technical in nature—I don’t get into whether this or that policy is good or bad for the Government. They are usually of something like “If you mean this, then I suggest you say it this way.” As such, I started pointing out that use of the lower-case “p” in “part” and “s” in “subpart” was inconsistent with both the FAR Drafting Guide and FAR 1.105-2( c)(3). Yes, important stuff. I was convinced that there was some unreasonable bureaucrat in the labyrinthine review process of FAR rules who would arbitrarily withhold approval until the “p” and “s” were lower-case. All they had to do was simply read either the FAR Drafting Guide or FAR 1.105-2( c)(3) and they would be forced to relent, I thought.

Eventually, I found out that there was more to the story. The change from upper-case to lower-case could be traced back to the 2008 version of the Government Printing Office Style Manual. The manual contains an entire chapter of capitalization rules (Chapter 3). Rule 3.9 states as follows:

A common noun used with a date, number, or letter, merely to denote time or sequence, or for the purpose of reference, record, or temporary convenience, does not form a proper name and is therefore not capitalized.

The list of examples following Rule 3.9 (or is it “rule 3.9”?) contains the entry “part I”. Chapter 4, which contains a list of capitalization examples, contains the entry “part 2, A, II, etc.; but Part 2, when part of title: Part 2: Iron and Steel Industry”. Ok, so there was no unreasonable bureaucrat to blame. However, the GPO Style Manual was inconsistent with both the FAR Drafting Guide and FAR 1.105-2( c)(3). “What a crisis!”, I thought.

This brings us to a technical amendment published in Federal Acquisition Circular 2005-60 (77 FR 44065) that formally amended FAR 1.105-2( c)(3) to illustrate the “correct” way to cite a part or subpart of the FAR:

Using the FAR coverage at 9.106-4(d) as a typical illustration, reference to the—

(i) Part would be “FAR part 9” outside the FAR and “part 9” within the FAR.

(ii) Subpart would be “FAR subpart 9.1” outside the FAR and “subpart 9.1’’ within the FAR.

Crisis averted. However, there still is a lot of text within the FAR that uses upper-case when referencing parts and subparts. These co-exist in the FAR with citations of parts and subparts that are lower-case. For example, FAR 4.1402( b ) starts with:

When contracting officers report the contract action to the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) in accordance with FAR subpart 4.6, certain data will then pre-populate from FPDS, to assist contractors in completing and submitting their reports.

The very next paragraph, FAR 4.1402( c) states:

If the contractor fails to comply with the reporting requirements, the contracting officer shall exercise appropriate contractual remedies. In addition, the contracting officer shall make the contractor’s failure to comply with the reporting requirements a part of the contractor’s performance information under Subpart 42.15.

It’s fair to say that my prodding probably had something to do with the change in FAR 1.105-2( c)(3). However, in retrospect, I’m not sure that the desired result—consistency—was achieved.

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