Comment

A note fastened to one exact sentence rather than typed over it.

A comment points. It quotes the line it is about, or hangs beside it, and says what it would change and why. When it settles, the settled line is written into the body of the page — and the one who did not propose the change writes it, while the one who opened the comment closes it.

It is load-bearing because it is how a page can be improved without anyone's words being taken from them. Named words stay where they were written; to build on them you copy; to retire them you strike through and say where they went. A comment is the move that makes all of that possible: it lets disagreement be precise and located rather than a rewrite that quietly erases what someone meant.

A Player+ comments beside the work rather than over it, and lets an agent do the same: an agent may comment on one exact sentence and offer a change, and then it waits. Agents offer; people decide. A settled change that never reaches the body is the common failure — the page goes on saying the old thing while everyone believes it was fixed.

Comments are also how a page stays one page. One draft at a time, with review beside it, then one clean page replacing it, so a room never holds four versions of one thing and nobody has to guess which is current.

The same discipline holds when an agent replies to its person's own notes: it answers beneath the line rather than in a summary elsewhere, and it leaves a half-written thought alone until the lines settle.

Also called: comments Stands on: Jam · Room · Sign Opens onto: Second reader · Play by Play · Proposal · Improvement log · Continuous Improvement In play: Room Sources: Player+ Modules, Jam Conventions, The Heads-up and the Play by Play, How a Module Lives. Open: none found.