Technical writing – Definition of repetitive

From a technical writer’s point of view, boilerplate is any text that can be reused (sometimes called reused) in a number of different documents without much change from the original. It is a copy that a client often provides that includes information about an organization’s history, facilities, or capabilities. Since these things don’t change, or change very little, it doesn’t make sense to reinvent the information every time you need it. All the writer has to do is update and refresh the model and put it where it is needed.

From a programmer’s point of view, boilerplate are sections of code that must be included in various places in a program with little or no change. It is also used to refer to languages ​​that are verbosity; when a programmer has to write a lot of code to do a small job.

From a legal point of view, boilerplate is a standard provision in a contract. It’s the reason why when you buy a house, the contract is twenty pages and you have to sign here, here, here, put your initials here and sign here.

For the word nuts (like me) here’s a bit of history. The term goes back about a hundred years when things ran on steam power. Due to the high pressure inside a steam boiler, the steel had to be hard and thick. Anything big and strong was called repetitive. Around the same time, when printing was done with steel plates that could be used over and over again, text that was to be widely reproduced was called boilerplate. Newspapers, especially, used templates so that newspapers could be printed across the country simply by shipping printing plates to each location.