How to create a blackline
A blackline is a comparison between two versions. What changes is how you make one, and how much of the document it has to cover.
What is being asked for
A blackline is a document showing the differences between two versions. In most practice it is the same thing as a redline, and a request for one is a request for a comparison.
Where the distinction is drawn, a blackline means a comparison generated between two finished versions rather than markup a person made — every difference, including the ones nobody proposed. If someone has asked for a blackline before signature, that is almost certainly the sense they mean, and generating it is the right response even if you have tracked changes to hand.
Either way the useful question is not which word to use. It is which two versions. Ask, if it was not stated.
From two documents
Where both versions exist as files, generate the comparison from the files themselves. That way it covers numbering, styles, tables, headers and everything else that lives outside the visible text.
- Word. Review, then Compare. The result is a new document with tracked changes in it, which is the deliverable. See the step-by-step guide.
- A dedicated comparison product. Litera, Draftable and similar tools handle long agreements, PDFs and mixed formats, and produce output firms are used to receiving. If your practice runs on them, use them.
- Neither. Other applications can compare documents, with limits worth knowing before you rely on one.
Save the result under a name that says what it is against:Agreement — blackline against 14 March draft. The recipient's first question is always which two versions, and the filename can answer it.
From two clauses
Where what you have is two versions of a clause rather than two files — pasted into an email, quoted in a thread — the whole document-comparison apparatus is more than the job needs. Compare the text directly and copy the marked-up result into your reply. That is what this tool does, and the email guide covers it.
Be clear about what that is, though. It is a comparison of the text you gave it, and it is not a substitute for a document blackline where a document is what was asked for.
Before you send it
- Check the direction. Original and revised the wrong way round inverts everything, and a blackline that shows your own changes as theirs is worse than none.
- Check the count. Far more changes than expected usually means the comparison ran against the wrong version.
- Check what travels with the file. A Word comparison carries author names and timestamps from both source documents.
- Say what it is against. In the covering email, in one line.