# Wordsworth Writing — full content > Independent reference site: technical writing, editing, Microsoft Word formatting, government forms for A/E firms, and legal/financial document literacy. --- URL: https://wordsworthwriting.net/ A reference site for working writers and editors # Write clearly. Format cleanly. Ship documents that win work. Wordsworth Writing is a free reference site about the unglamorous craft that keeps businesses running: technical writing, editing, document formatting in Microsoft Word, and the government forms — like the SF330 — that architecture, engineering, and environmental firms live and die by. ### The SF330, explained What Standard Form 330 is, how Parts I and II fit together, and how to manage it sanely in Microsoft Word. Read the SF330 guide → ### Templates in Word How to build report, proposal, and resume templates that survive contact with real projects — styles, sections, and fields. Read the templates guide → ### Technical editing The levels of edit, how professional editors price work, and what to ask for when you hire one. Read the editing guide → ### Writing tips Short, practical notes on style, grammar, abbreviations, citations, and the habits that make documents readable. Browse the tips → ### The law behind the SF330 The Brooks Act, FAR Subpart 36.6, and the protest decisions that show exactly how qualification packages get downgraded. Read the legal background → ### Settlement documents Structured settlement paperwork, document by document — the agreement, the qualified assignment, the annuity, and the transfer stack. Read the documents guide → ## Why these topics? For more than twenty years, this domain was home to an Alaska-based technical writing and editing practice whose most-visited pages were about exactly these subjects — the SF330 form in Word, templates for A/E/C firms, and technical editing. That business has moved on, but people still arrive here from old links, bookmarks, and citations looking for the same answers. This site keeps those answers available: the guides are newly written, plain-English treatments of the topics the old site was known for. ## Start with the fundamentals Most business and technical documents fail in the same few ways: they bury the point, they mix formats until the reader loses trust, and nobody edits them before they go out the door. The fixes are boring and reliable: - Lead with the conclusion. Reports and proposals are not mystery novels. Put the recommendation, the price, or the finding first, then support it. - Use styles, not formatting. In Word, every heading, caption, and body paragraph should carry a named style. Direct formatting is how documents rot. Our templates guide shows the pattern. - Separate editing passes. Structure first, sentences second, typos last. A single "read it over" pass catches almost nothing. See the levels of edit. - Respect the form. Government solicitations mean what they say. If the RFP says 10 pages, page 11 does not exist. The SF330 guide covers the strictest example. --- URL: https://wordsworthwriting.net/sf330-form-in-microsoft-word/ Government forms # The SF330, explained Standard Form 330 — "Architect-Engineer Qualifications" — is how architecture, engineering, and related firms present their qualifications to the U.S. federal government. If your firm pursues federal A/E work, the SF330 is your résumé, your portfolio, and your first impression, all in one rigid package. ## What the SF330 is Under the Brooks Act, federal agencies select architect-engineer firms on qualifications rather than price. The SF330 is the standardized instrument for those qualifications. It replaced the old SF254 and SF255 forms in 2004, and it comes in two parts: - Part I — Contract-Specific Qualifications. Prepared fresh for each solicitation. It describes the team you are proposing for this contract: the key personnel, their resumes, example projects, and how the team members worked together before. - Part II — General Qualifications. A standing profile of a firm (or a branch office): size, disciplines, experience categories, and revenue ranges. Agencies may keep Part II on file, and it is typically updated annually. ## Part I, section by section Block numbers below are from the current edition of the form (Standard Form 330, Rev. 7/2021, OMB control number 9000-0157). | Section | What goes there | What trips people up | | A–B (blocks 1–8) | Contract information — title and location, public notice date, solicitation number — and the prime's point of contact. | Block 1 must match the announcement exactly as shown; the instructions say so verbatim, and evaluators sort stacks of these by it. | | C (blocks 9–11) | Every firm on the proposed team — prime first, then each subconsultant with its role and, for firms with branch offices, the specific branch involved. | Section C must list every firm that appears anywhere later in the form — resumes and example projects included. Named subconsultants are a commitment: changing them later requires contracting-officer approval. | | D | Organizational chart of the proposed team, presented as an attachment after Section C. | The chart must agree with Sections C and E. Reviewers check. Names that appear in one place and not another read as carelessness. | | E (blocks 12–19) | Resumes of key personnel, grouped by firm with the prime's people first: name, role, years of experience (block 14a total / 14b with current firm), firm, education, professional registrations, other qualifications, and up to five relevant projects each. | Block 14b — years with the current firm — gets compared across competitors, and the five relevant projects per resume should echo Section F wherever honestly possible; that overlap is scored in Section G. | | F (blocks 20–24) | Example projects that best illustrate the team's qualifications — ten unless the agency specifies otherwise — each with year completed, project owner, a point of contact with phone number, and a relevance narrative. | Blocks 23a–c name a reference the agency may actually call. Pick projects the proposed team worked on, not just the firm's flashiest work — Section G exposes the difference. | | G (blocks 26–29) | The matrix mapping key personnel (in Section E order) to example projects (keyed 1–10 from Section F). | A sparse matrix is the quiet killer of SF330 packages — it says your proposed team has never worked together. | | H (block 30) | Additional information the solicitation asks for — often where agencies request narrative on management approach, quality control, or capacity. | Read the synopsis carefully; Section H requirements vary by solicitation and are where page limits usually bite. | | I (blocks 31–33) | Signature of an authorized representative, name/title, and date. | The signature attests the information is current and factual and that all named firms agreed to participate — inflated staff counts or stale data have cost top-ranked firms their selections. See the protest case law. | ## Working with the SF330 in Microsoft Word The government publishes the SF330 as a fillable PDF, but most marketing teams assemble it in Word because resumes and project sheets are living documents that get reused across pursuits. A few hard-won practices: - Build each section as its own template. One Word template for the Section E resume block, one for the Section F project sheet. Assemble per-pursuit copies from those masters rather than editing last year's submission in place. (Our templates guide covers the style-based approach.) - Use tables with fixed row heights to mirror the form's blocks, and keep the block numbering (e.g., "12. Name," "13. Role in this contract") exactly as the form prints it. Evaluators navigate by those numbers. - Keep a master library. Maintain every employee resume and every project description in SF330 format year-round, in one folder, each in the several lengths you actually use (full block, one paragraph, one line). Assembling a pursuit then becomes selection, not writing. - Check the current form edition before every submission. The form is revised occasionally; agencies note the required edition in the solicitation. The authoritative source is GSA's forms library (search "SF330" at gsa.gov/forms), which always hosts the current PDF. - PDF the final package from Word and verify fonts, page count, and file size against the solicitation's instructions. Submissions get rejected on mechanics more often than anyone admits. Looking for a ready-made SF330 in Word? This site is a reference resource and doesn't sell templates. The current official fillable PDF is free from GSA's forms library, and several commercial vendors sell Word conversions — search "SF330 template Word." The section notes above apply to any of them. ## Part II in brief Part II is a one-page firm profile: employee counts by discipline, experience profile codes with revenue index numbers, and the branch offices it covers. Three things matter in practice: keep it current — FAR 36.603 has agencies reviewing their files at least annually and discarding material not updated within three years; file a separate Part II for each branch office that seeks work or has a key role on a proposed team (the form's own instructions require it, and each firm on a Part I team submits its own Part II); and make sure the discipline and experience codes you claim are the ones your Part I packages actually demonstrate. ## Why the form works this way The SF330's structure isn't arbitrary — it implements the Brooks Act's qualifications-based selection, where price never enters the competition and the capability statement carries everything. The statute, the FAR Subpart 36.6 evaluation machinery, and two decades of GAO protest decisions about what gets firms downgraded (stale data, generic prose, phantom key personnel, careless capacity statements) are covered in the companion piece: The law behind the SF330. --- URL: https://wordsworthwriting.net/sf330-requirements-brooks-act/ Government forms · Legal background # The law behind the SF330: why the form works the way it does Every quirk of the SF330 — why price appears nowhere on it, why the signature attests that information is "current and factual," why the same experience shows up in three different sections — traces back to one statute and one FAR subpart. Understanding them is the difference between filling out the form and competing on it. This companion to our SF330 practical guide covers the legal framework and the mistakes that protest decisions punish most often. ## The Brooks Act: selection without price The SF330 exists because of the Brooks Act of 1972, codified at 40 U.S.C. §§ 1101–1104. It commits the federal government to qualifications-based selection (QBS) for architect-engineer services: agencies publicly announce every A/E requirement, evaluate firms solely on demonstrated competence and qualifications, rank at least three of the most highly qualified, and only then negotiate a fair and reasonable price with the top-ranked firm. If negotiations fail, the agency formally terminates them and moves to the next firm on the list. That structure has consequences an SF330 author feels directly: - Price competition never enters the selection. Your SF330 is not a proposal — courts describe it as a capability statement. There is no price volume to fall back on; the qualifications narrative carries the entire competition. - "Firm" is a legal term. The Act defines an eligible firm as a legal entity permitted by law to practice architecture or engineering. In Accura Engineering & Consulting Services, Inc. v. United States (Court of Federal Claims, 2023), an award was overturned because the prime relied on a subcontractor's license — the court held the prime must itself hold the required licensure. A teaming arrangement doesn't create a licensed entity; a joint venture can. - The QBS rule follows the work. Task orders for A/E services under IDIQ vehicles are also qualification-based selections under the same framework — agencies can't convert them into price shootouts. ## FAR Subpart 36.6: the machinery The Brooks Act is implemented by FAR Subpart 36.6, and the SF330 itself is prescribed by FAR 53.236-2 (current edition: Rev. 7/2021) and mandated by FAR 36.702. The pieces worth knowing: | Provision | What it requires | Why you care | | FAR 36.602-1 | The evaluation criteria: (1) professional qualifications; (2) specialized experience and technical competence; (3) capacity to perform in the required time; (4) past performance on cost control, quality, and schedule; (5) location/knowledge of the locality; (6) other criteria the synopsis adds. | This list, plus whatever the synopsis adds, is the whole scoring universe. Organize Section H (and really the whole Part I) around the announced criteria, in their announced order of importance. | | FAR 36.602-2/-3 | A qualified evaluation board reviews submissions, evaluates against the criteria, holds discussions with at least three of the most highly qualified firms, and writes a documented selection report. | Real professionals read the form, and the discussion stage exists by statute — write for a technical reader who may soon interview you. | | FAR 36.603 | Part II (General Qualifications) is filed with agency offices; agencies review files at least annually, encourage annual Part II updates, and discard material not updated within three years. | An annual Part II refresh isn't optional hygiene — a stale Part II can age out of the agency's files entirely. | | FAR 36.606 | Negotiations start with the most preferred firm; the extent of subcontracting is a key negotiation topic, and subcontracting is limited to firms agreed upon in negotiations. | The team you name in Sections C–D is a commitment, not decoration. Changing named subconsultants later requires contracting-officer approval. | ## What protest decisions teach SF330 authors Disappointed firms can protest A/E selections to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) or the Court of Federal Claims. Both apply a deferential standard — they won't re-score your form — but the decided cases map the failure modes with unusual precision. Six lessons recur: ### 1. Every claim must be current and factual — the signature says so Block 31's signature "attests that the information provided is current and factual." That language has teeth. GAO has repeatedly upheld agencies that terminated negotiations with the top-ranked firm after discovering inflated qualifications — a firm that counted part-time and could-be-hired individuals in its staff totals (Paul F. Pugh, 1980), and a firm claiming 21 employees that actually had one, the sole proprietor (Vertrans Design Associates, 1991). Winning the ranking with inaccurate data isn't winning anything. ### 2. Part I must be current as of this submission GAO's Mounts Engineering decision (1985) drew the line that still governs: the general form (now Part II) is refreshed annually, but the contract-specific form (Part I) must be accurate as of the particular project. Copying last year's Part I forward — old staff counts, departed key personnel, stale workload — is a misrepresentation risk, not a shortcut. ### 3. Bare-bones submissions rate bare-bones scores In Electronic Interiors (2011), GAO upheld low ratings where a firm repeated the same generic sentences for each key person and never said what work was actually done. The burden is on the firm to submit a well-written capability statement detailed enough for meaningful review. Generic prose isn't a style problem; it's scored as an experience deficit. ### 4. Watch what your capacity statements imply In HydroGeoLogic (2008), a firm wrote that it would be at 50% capacity in six months and 80% in twelve — and GAO upheld the agency's weakness finding on the capacity criterion. Statements about workload and availability are read literally, at the moment of contract inception. ### 5. Key personnel must be real In OLBN Architectural Service (2010), GAO upheld the downgrading of a firm whose three named architects had never worked for it — the firm planned to hire them after award. Section E resumes carry the evaluation; contingent people carry contingent credibility. And under Evergreen JV (2020), agencies must evaluate qualitatively — the years-with-current-firm block (14b), license depth, and the Section G matrix get compared across offerors, not just checked for presence. ### 6. If you protest, the clock is 10 days — and debriefings don't extend it Because a Brooks Act selection is not a "competitive proposal" procurement, GAO's debriefing exception does not apply: a protest must be filed within 10 days of when the firm knew or should have known its basis (McKissack-URS Partners, 2012; Battelle Memorial Institute, 2022). Firms that wait for a post-award debriefing routinely lose on timeliness without any review of the merits. ## The quiet asymmetry worth remembering Agencies get deference on judgment but not on process: protests succeed when an evaluation applied criteria the synopsis never stated (Risk Analysis and Mitigation Partners, 2014), mechanically counted experience instances instead of assessing them (Evergreen JV), skipped the required discussions (Mounts), or left no documentation of its reasoning (Wadell Engineering, 1980). For the firm, the practical inverse holds: write to the stated criteria, in their stated weighting, with specific verifiable facts — because that is the exact record a review would examine. Scope note: this page summarizes public statutes, regulations, and protest decisions for background; it is not legal advice, and agency supplements (like the DFARS provisions that apply to Department of Defense work) add requirements beyond the baseline described here. Verify against the current text at acquisition.gov and your solicitation's own instructions — the synopsis always controls. For the form's mechanics — sections, blocks, and managing it in Word — see the practical SF330 guide. --- URL: https://wordsworthwriting.net/templates-in-microsoft-word/ Document formatting # Templates in Microsoft Word that survive real projects Every firm has a "template" — usually last year's report with the client's name half-replaced. A real template is different: it is a .dotx file where the formatting lives in named styles, the boilerplate is marked for replacement, and a new document starts clean every time. Here is how to build one. ## The one rule: styles, not formatting Almost everything that goes wrong with Word documents — mystery indents, headings that won't join the table of contents, numbering that restarts at 1 in the middle of a report — comes from formatting text directly instead of through styles. In a proper template: - Every paragraph carries a named style: Heading 1–4, Body Text, Caption, Table Text, List Bullet, List Number. - Fonts, spacing, and indents are defined once, in the style — never applied by hand. - Multilevel numbering (1, 1.1, 1.1.1) is attached to the heading styles through a single list style, which is the only configuration that keeps numbering stable in long documents. - The table of contents, list of figures, and list of tables are fields that build themselves from those styles. Do this and a 300-page report reformats in minutes. Skip it and every deliverable is an archaeology project. ## The template library an A/E/C firm actually needs | Template | Core contents | | Technical report | Cover, signature/seal page, executive summary, numbered headings, figure and table captions, appendix scheme (A, B, C with per-appendix page numbers), references section. | | Proposal | Cover letter, compliance-friendly heading structure that can mirror an RFP's outline, project sheets, resume blocks, cost tables. | | Resume (marketing) | The same person in several lengths: full page, half page, one paragraph, one line — plus an SF330 Section E version for federal work. | | Project description | One master sheet per project with the facts (client, dates, fee, role, outcomes) and prewritten versions at several lengths. | | Letter / memo | Letterhead as a first-page-only header, correct margins for window envelopes, memo variant with distribution block. | | Meeting minutes / field report | Fixed metadata table (project no., date, weather, personnel), numbered observation entries, photo layout pages. | ## Details that separate professional templates from amateur ones - Save as .dotx, not .docx. A template opened by double-click should create Document1, not open itself for accidental editing. - Mark what must change. Use content controls or highlighted [BRACKETED PROMPTS] for every field the author must replace, then make the final QC pass a search for "[" — it finds every forgotten prompt in seconds. - Different first page, different sections. Covers and dividers belong in their own Word sections so headers, footers, and page numbering behave. Roman numerals through the front matter, Arabic starting at page 1 of the body. - Fields for repeated facts. Project number, client name, and document title should each be typed once (document properties or a bookmark) and referenced everywhere else with fields. - Table styles. Define one or two table styles in the template so every table in the deliverable matches without anyone touching border menus. - Test by destruction. Paste ugly text from email and old PDFs into the template, then fix it using only styles. If the fix requires manual formatting, the template isn't finished. ## Government forms as templates Federal and state forms (the SF330 family, grant applications, agency report shells) are a special case: the layout is prescribed, so the template's job is to reproduce the printed form faithfully — fixed-height table rows, the form's own block numbering, and locked cells where the form's captions live. See the SF330 guide for the standard example, and always verify you are reproducing the current edition of any government form before submitting. --- URL: https://wordsworthwriting.net/technical-editing-document-formatting-services/ The craft # Technical editing and document formatting, demystified "Can you look this over?" hides at least four different jobs, priced differently and done in a different order. Knowing the levels of edit — and asking for the right one — is the difference between a document that gets polished and one that gets rescued. ## The levels of edit | Level | What the editor does | When you need it | | Proofreading | Final pass on near-final pages: typos, punctuation, broken cross-references, bad line and page breaks. No rewriting. | After layout, before the document ships or prints. | | Copyediting | Sentence-level correctness and consistency: grammar, usage, terminology, capitalization, numbers, citations — applied against a style guide. | Every document that leaves the building. This is the default meaning of "editing." | | Substantive / line editing | Rewriting for clarity and flow: untangling sentences, cutting repetition, smoothing transitions, flagging logic gaps. Common for multi-author reports and ESL authors. | When the content is right but the reading is hard. | | Structural / developmental editing | Reorganizing the document itself: what goes where, what's missing, what should be an appendix, whether the executive summary answers the reader's question. | Early — before the writing is "done." Cheapest bought first, most expensive bought last. | Formatting is the separate, parallel craft: making the document's typography, numbering, tables, and figures consistent and navigable — ideally by rebuilding it on a proper style-based template rather than patching by hand. ## How editors price work Professional technical editors typically charge by the hour, and throughput depends on the level of edit: a copyedit of reasonably clean technical prose commonly runs a handful of pages per hour, while heavy line editing or ESL rewriting can run much slower. That is why an experienced editor will ask to see the document before quoting — the honest unit of estimation is the sample page, not the page count. Flat per-project rates are common for repeat work like newsletters and standing reports, where the effort is predictable. Two practical implications when you're buying: - Send instructions with the document — the deadline, the style guide (or "match this earlier report"), what must not be touched, and the RFP or client instructions if compliance matters. - Ask for tracked changes. In Word, an edit delivered with track changes and queries in comments is auditable; a silently "fixed" file is not. You should be able to see and veto every change. ## What good editors ask you - Who is the reader, and what decision do they make with this document? - Which style guide governs — company guide, client guide, or a standard one (Chicago, APA, GPO, your agency's)? - What level of edit do you actually want — and is the schedule consistent with it? - Is the formatting in scope, and is there a real template to format onto? - Are there compliance constraints (page limits, font floors, required sections) that override style? If you're hiring and the editor asks none of these, keep looking. ## Editing AI-drafted text A growing share of business documents now start life as machine-generated drafts. They arrive grammatical but generic: confident filler, invented specifics, and a voice that belongs to nobody. Editing them is closer to substantive editing than proofreading — verify every fact and citation, cut the throat-clearing, and rewrite until the document sounds like the organization that signs it. The levels-of-edit discipline above applies unchanged; only the failure modes are new. --- URL: https://wordsworthwriting.net/writing-tips/ Field notes # Writing tips that survive contact with deadlines This page continues a tradition of the old site at this domain: short, practical notes on the mechanics of technical and business writing. No theory — just the calls editors make all day. ## Acronyms and abbreviations - Spell out on first use, acronym in parentheses — then use the acronym consistently. If a term appears only twice, don't abbreviate it at all. - Long documents get a list of abbreviations in the front matter; the first-use rule then applies per chapter, because nobody reads chapter 6 remembering chapter 2. - An acronym the reader must decode is worse than the three words it saved. "The QAPP references the SAP and the HASP" is a sentence only its author can love. ## Numbers - Most technical styles: words for zero through nine, numerals for 10 and up — but always numerals with units (3 mm, 5%), and never start a sentence with a numeral. - Keep precision honest. Reporting 12.847% from a measurement good to whole percentage points isn't accuracy, it's costume. - In tables, align decimal points and repeat the unit in the column head, not in every cell. ## Hyphens and their relatives - Hyphenate compound modifiers before the noun (a high-pressure line) but not after (the line is high pressure), and never after an ‑ly adverb (a highly effective method). - En dash for ranges (2019–2024, pages 10–14); em dash — like this — for the break in thought. Word's autocorrect gets ranges wrong constantly; check them. ## Usage calls that come up every week - which / that: that restricts ("the pump that failed"), which adds an aside ("the pump, which was installed in 2019"). If you can drop the clause without changing the meaning, use which and a comma. - affect / effect: to affect is to influence; an effect is a result. (The verb effect, as in "effect a change," is usually a sign the sentence wants rewriting.) - comprise / compose: the whole comprises the parts; the parts compose the whole. "Comprised of" is always wrong and always survives review — search for it explicitly. - ensure / insure / assure: you ensure an outcome, insure a car, and assure a person. - i.e. / e.g.: i.e. means "that is"; e.g. means "for example." Both take a following comma and belong in parentheses, not in running prose. ## Style guides: pick one and obey it Half of all editing arguments are really the absence of a named style guide. Common choices: Chicago for general business prose, APA for research and social-science reporting, the GPO Style Manual for U.S. government documents, and a house style guide for everything the big guides leave open (product names, units, capitalization of your own titles). The winning move isn't the "right" guide — it's writing the choice down. (Building a house guide is a template problem too; see templates in Word.) ## The pass that fixes the most Read the document once only for topic sentences: first sentence of every paragraph, in order. If that skeleton tells the story, the document works. If it doesn't, no amount of comma-polishing will save it — reorganize first. This is the cheapest structural edit there is, and you can do it to your own draft. --- URL: https://wordsworthwriting.net/structured-settlement-documents/ Legal & financial documents # Structured settlement documents, explained A structured settlement isn't one document — it's a small stack of them, each doing a different legal job, drafted so precisely that changing a single verb can shift who owes the money for the next forty years. This guide walks through the stack the way an editor would: what each document is for, what its key language does, and which details deserve a second read. It's part of this site's series on reading and understanding professional documents. ## First, the shape of the deal In a structured settlement, an injury claim resolves not as a single lump sum but as a schedule of future periodic payments — monthly checks, annual amounts, lump sums at milestone dates, or a mix. Federal tax law is what makes the arrangement attractive: damages for personal physical injuries are excluded from income under Internal Revenue Code § 104(a)(2) whether paid as a lump sum or as periodic payments, and since the Periodic Payment Settlement Tax Act of 1982, the periodic-payment version enjoys statutory certainty. The catch that shapes every document below: the recipient must not have actual or constructive receipt of the underlying fund. The paperwork exists largely to keep that true. ## The founding documents | Document | What it does | What to read twice | | Settlement agreement and release | Resolves the underlying claim and defines the payment schedule — amounts, dates, and to whom. Everything downstream refers back to it. | The payment obligation's exact wording. Whether the obligor promises to make the payments or merely to purchase an annuity that makes them determines who bears the risk if the annuity issuer ever fails — a distinction the Federal Circuit treated as decisive in Langkamp v. United States (2019). | | Qualified assignment | Transfers the payment obligation from the defendant (or its insurer) to an assignment company under IRC § 130, so the defendant can close its books and the claimant isn't exposed to the defendant's future solvency. | The § 130 conditions are visible in the text: payments must be fixed and determinable in amount and timing, and the recipient must have no power to accelerate, defer, increase, or decrease them. That no-acceleration clause is why the schedule truly is fixed. | | Annuity contract | The funding asset: an annuity purchased from a state-licensed life insurer that generates the scheduled payments. Under § 130 it must be bought within a 60-days-before-to-60-days-after window around the assignment. | Who owns it. The payee receives payments but typically does not own the contract — the assignment company (or, in some government settlements, the government itself) does. Ownership controls who can change anything later. | | Payee designation / benefits letter | The issuer's confirmation of the schedule and the named payee, plus beneficiary designations for payments that survive the payee. | Beneficiary designations — the one piece of this stack a recipient can usually update, and the one most often left stale after marriages, divorces, and births. | ## If payments are ever sold: the transfer stack A second, entirely different set of documents appears if the payment recipient later sells some or all future payments to a factoring company for cash today. Congress and every state legislature decided this transaction is risky enough to wrap in mandatory paperwork: IRC § 5891 imposes a 40% excise tax on the buyer unless the transfer is approved in advance by a court order under a state structured settlement protection act (SSPA). That makes the documents below effectively universal: - The disclosure statement. Delivered to the seller before signing, typically listing the payments being sold, their aggregate value, the discounted present value (computed against a published federal rate), the gross purchase price, itemized fees, and the effective discount rate. This is the document that states, in one place, what the deal actually costs. State law dictates its timing and contents. - The transfer agreement. The contract of sale — which specific payments, for how much, with what representations. Read for what happens if the court declines approval, and for any provisions that reach payments beyond the ones being sold. - The transfer petition. The filing that asks a court to approve the transfer. SSPAs require the court to find, among other things, that the transfer is in the best interest of the payee, taking account of the welfare and support of dependents. - The qualified court order. The approval order that satisfies § 5891 and shields the transaction from the excise tax. No order, no lawful transfer — and courts do say no: in one 2026 Pennsylvania federal decision, approval was denied where the pricing worked out to an effective annual interest rate near 24%, which the court found could not be in the payee's best interest. ## The federal-settlement special case When the paying party is the United States — most commonly a Federal Tort Claims Act settlement — the same document stack acquires extra layers, and one structural difference dominates: the government often owns the annuity and retains the right to designate the payee. Courts have held that a state court cannot order the government to redirect those payments — the Sixth Circuit's TransAmerica decision (2007) treated that as a matter of federal sovereign immunity — which means the ordinary transfer stack above simply doesn't work against a government-owned annuity. Other federal particulars visible in the documents: settlements above a threshold require Justice Department approval; FTCA attorney fees are capped by statute (25% of a judgment or settlement, 20% of an administrative award); and the brokers who arrange annuities for federal settlements appear on a Justice Department list maintained under 28 C.F.R. § 50.24, renewed annually by sworn declaration. ## An editor's checklist for reading the stack - Trace one payment through every document. Pick a single scheduled payment and confirm its amount, date, and payee are identical in the settlement agreement, the qualified assignment, the annuity contract, and the benefits letter. Discrepancies among these documents are exactly the kind of defect that surfaces decades later. - Find the verb that creates the obligation. "Shall pay" and "shall purchase an annuity" are different promises with different survivors. - Identify the owner of every contract. Payee ≠ owner, and only owners can act. - In any transfer document, find the effective discount rate — not the fees, not the "purchase price," the rate. It is the single number that makes offers comparable. - Check the definitions section against usage. These documents chain-reference each other ("the Periodic Payments," "the Qualified Assignment"); a defined term used loosely in one document weakens the whole chain. The same discipline applies to any templated legal document set. Scope note: this is a document-literacy guide, not legal or financial advice. Structured settlement transfers are governed by the protection act of the payee's state plus IRC § 5891, and the terms above vary by state and by contract — anyone considering a transfer should have the actual documents reviewed by their own counsel or advisor. --- URL: https://wordsworthwriting.net/about/ About # About this site Wordsworth Writing is an independent reference site about technical writing, editing, document formatting in Microsoft Word, and the government forms that professional services firms work with. ## The history of this domain From the early 2000s through the mid-2020s, wordsworthwriting.net was the home of an Alaska-based technical writing and editing practice. Its best-known pages covered the SF330 federal form in Microsoft Word, templates for architecture/engineering/environmental (A/E/C) firms, and technical editing services, and it accumulated links and citations from directories, forums, and reference pages over two decades. That business no longer operates at this address, and this site is not affiliated with it or its former owner. When the domain became available in 2026, the current owner registered it and stood up this reference site so that the many old links pointing here would land on genuinely useful, current material about the same subjects — rather than on a parking page or worse. ## What's here - The SF330, explained — the form's structure and how to manage it in Word. - Templates in Microsoft Word — building report, proposal, and resume templates on styles. - Technical editing and formatting — the levels of edit, pricing, and hiring. - Writing tips — short notes on usage, numbers, abbreviations, and style guides. All content on this site is newly written. Nothing from the previous site has been copied, and no endorsement by its former operator is implied. Historical versions of the old site remain viewable in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. ## Corrections Spotted an error? These pages get revised as the forms and tools they describe change. The site is maintained privately; factual corrections are welcome and can be sent to the postmaster address at this domain.