Is there a provision for an administrative change to a statute or by-law, like spelling or grammar, without going to the full membership for vote?

[Guest Janan]

Sometimes when statutes, by-laws, policies, etc. are sumbitted to the full memberhip of the organization for vote there are grammatical or spelling errors not noticed prior to approval. Is there any provision for these administrative corrections to be done by committee or persons overseeing these documents, such as a Revision of Laws Committee, without bringing the correction back to the floor for full membership vote?

Also, if printing errors happen in the same line, spelling or grammatical, may these be corrected in the next printing without full membership vote?

[jstackpo]

No, and No. Unless you have adopted a rule authorizing someone trustworthy to make such changes.

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[Gary Novosielski]

Whatever was adopted is what was adopted. Changing it will require further amendment. The secretary (typically) may be authorized to make technical corrections such as renumbering to accommodate inserted or deleted paragraphs, for example.

But spelling is not a strictly technical change, and there are instances where differently spelled words can have different (and valid) meanings.

Punctuation is even more problematic. Changing punctuation can change the entire meaning of the language; e.g., compare:

• Woman, without her man, is nothing.
  
• Woman: without her, man is nothing.
  

But if the printing does not precisely reflect what was adopted, then correcting future printings to agree with the actual motion recorded in the minutes would require no special parliamentary process, except maybe authorizing the payment to the printer.

[George Mervosh]

What RONR does say an assembly can do is:

"Corrections of article or section numbers or cross-references that cannot result in a change of meaning can be delegated, however, to the secretary or, in more involved cases, to a committee. An assembly may delegate its authority in this connection in a particular case, by adopting, for example, a resolution such as the following:

Resolved, That the secretary [or, "the . . . committee"] be authorized to correct article and section designations, punctuation, and cross-references and to make such other technical and conforming changes as may be necessary to reflect the intent of the Society in connection with ..." RONR (11th ed.), p. 598, l. 35 to p. 599, l. 12

This limited resolution must be authorized by the assembly. An officer or committee cannot assume any authority on his {its} own.

[Guest Edgar]

. . . if printing errors happen in the same line, spelling or grammatical, may these be corrected in the next printing without full membership vote?

As Alfred Korzybski famously said, "the map is not the territory".

The bylaws as recorded in the approved minutes are THE BYLAWS. Everything else is just a copy and, as Mr. Novosielski notes, inaccurate copies can (and should) be corrected without any special parliamentary action.

GP5eSF

[Josh Martin]

Sometimes when statutes, by-laws, policies, etc. are sumbitted to the full memberhip of the organization for vote there are grammatical or spelling errors not noticed prior to approval. Is there any provision for these administrative corrections to be done by committee or persons overseeing these documents, such as a Revision of Laws Committee, without bringing the correction back to the floor for full membership vote?

No, unless the assembly adopts a motion like the one Mr. Mervosh cited. Even then, if the change could potentially alter the meaning, you'll need the membership to make the change.

Also, if printing errors happen in the same line, spelling or grammatical, may these be corrected in the next printing without full membership vote?

Yes.