Ready, available, approved

Most offices treat three words as interchangeable: ready, available and approved. They turn up in the same meeting, often in the same sentence, and nobody asks what separates them. Each describes a different state of the work, however, and swapping one for another is among the cheapest ways I know of acquiring an expensive problem.

‘Ready’ means that whoever was writing has stopped. It is the author’s verdict on their own work and, like every verdict delivered in one’s own case, it deserves courtesy and a measure of scepticism. A ready document is a draft that has stopped changing in one pair of hands. It has not yet met anyone else.

‘Available’ is a promise. It says that the thing is in a particular place and will be found there. A presentation is available when it has an address, not when it exists somewhere on somebody’s laptop. The promise concerns the future: tomorrow at nine, whoever follows that link will find that file. If the link leads to an empty folder, the promise has been broken, however sincerely it was made.

‘Approved’ is a decision, and a decision carries two things the other words can do without: a name and a date. Someone identifiable, on a given day, said yes to this version and not to another. An approval without a name is a rumour; without a date, an anecdote; without a version, a misunderstanding biding its time.

The damage is done in the slippage. On Monday someone mentions in a meeting that next year’s budget is ready. A colleague hears ‘approved’ and forwards it. On Tuesday the author adjusts two figures, as was their right, since to them it was only ready. By Wednesday two budgets are in circulation, each believed final by someone, neither approved by anyone with the authority to approve it. Nobody lied. A word was merely saved.

Email makes matters worse, because email lasts. A subject line reading ‘Version available’ invites everyone to treat the attachment as settled, whatever the message says about changes still to come. The subject line, unlike the message, is read by everyone.

So when I am told that something is ready, I ask, politely, ready for what: to be read, to be used, or to be signed? The question takes three seconds and costs a raised eyebrow or two. The answer usually reveals that the accurate description needed two words, and that one of them was ‘nearly’.

I do not ask for office language to become a legal glossary, only that the three words be kept apart, because they describe three moments that do not overlap: someone has finished, something can be found, someone has decided. Confusing them does not make the work go faster. It makes the work look further along than it is, which is not the same thing, and is usually discovered on a Thursday.