BS 7671 :2018 + A4 :2026 Roman Numerals

AJJewsbury said:

One oddity I noticed in the BOB, that while existing Roman numerals (i) (ii) (iv) etc.for sub-paragraphs have been changed to Latin Letters (a) (b) etc. - on other places things that were previously bulleted lists have been changed to use Roman numerals (e.g. the NOTE to 527.2.4).

Does anyone know the underlying thinking?

Simply following BSI Rules for the structure and drafting of UK standards, which was updated in 2022.

For an Amendment, it would not be correct to re-write the whole standard, only update the text that is agreed to change. So we couldn't carte blanche adopt the whole of the new rules for this update, as this would mean a substantial re-write of the whole book.

But, with modern publishing technology, this is merely a formatting change that is applied at the 'push of a button' as it were, without a re-write of the actual content.

AJJewsbury said:

One oddity I noticed in the BOB, that while existing Roman numerals (i) (ii) (iv) etc.for sub-paragraphs have been changed to Latin Letters (a) (b) etc. - on other places things that were previously bulleted lists have been changed to use Roman numerals (e.g. the NOTE to 527.2.4).

Does anyone know the underlying thinking?

Simply following BSI Rules for the structure and drafting of UK standards, which was updated in 2022.

For an Amendment, it would not be correct to re-write the whole standard, only update the text that is agreed to change. So we couldn't carte blanche adopt the whole of the new rules for this update, as this would mean a substantial re-write of the whole book.

But, with modern publishing technology, this is merely a formatting change that is applied at the 'push of a button' as it were, without a re-write of the actual content.

It's also worth noting that, as we move forward with the standard, it may be that the IEC rules (IEC Directives Part 2) are followed for parts of the standard that are necessarily adopted from international work because of the UK's agreements with CENELEC.

If that is the case, consistency will need to be maintained across BS 7671; there are some differences between BSI's UK rules and the IEC Directives Part 2. At the moment, we have a mixture of old and new UK rules, and old and new IEC rules, throughout the wording in provisions of the standard.