Responsibility Charts

Responsibility charts give a visual facsimile of the intended structure of each subsection, which is usually a very long sentence, when dealing with any form of legislation. The use of conjunctions “and” and “or” combined with commas and/or semicolons, can be become very critical to understanding when and how many things should be or could be done. The flow of the sentence is given a structure, enabling the reader to understand where the critical “hinges” in the paragraph or sentence are. We view a “hinge” as the modal auxiliary verb and the use of the conjunctions as further hinges, where the modal auxiliary verb directs and the conjunction connects.

We present the text in manner which enables the user to instantly understand these hinges which are connected to the actions as directed by verbs which follow the modal auxiliary verbs. The sentence very often contains conditions which are indicated by a pronoun or a conjunction. Using these concepts we have created a Responsibility chart which converts the specific subsection or sentence into what should be done (obligations), and what can be done (rights) and what should be adhered to before it is done (conditions).