Blob

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Legal algebra. A variable. A textual placeholder interspersed in your boilerplate to indicate numerical things or proper nouns to be added later. So named because the most popular blobs are in fact, well, blobs: [·] [•] [●]

Blobs are silly fripperies for a number of reasons. Firstly, especially for technology-challenged legal eagles, they’re hard to find on the keyboard — you usually need to faff around with the “insert symbol” menu — and secondly because there are at least three types of blob: thin ones, middle-sized ones and fat-ones. Each has a different ASCII code, and given the number of iatrogenic hands through which your document will pass, the likelihood that everyone settles on the same type of blob is low. Thus, mechanically finding and replacing blobs is fraught, and you can never be entirely certain you’ve found them all.

A blob is legal markup of nil significance, and as such is not to be confused with a Biggs hoson, being a legal markup of infinitesimally small, but some legal significance.

See also

• Legal markup
• Biggs hoson
• Anal paradox
• Track changes
• Rider