The whole risk sat on one side of that docket

A carbon-copy docket, its yellow top sheet gone slightly translucent, a blue carbon edge showing where the two sheets were peeled apart. Three ruled columns, and one line filled in.

10 / SOR / 0. Underneath, a signature line, ruled and never used.

What does 10 / SOR / 0 actually record?

Ten copies, on sale or return terms, nothing paid today.

The line compresses a whole transaction into three fields. The first number is the count that left one person's hands and arrived on a shelf. The three letters are the terms those ten copies were left under. The final digit is what changed hands at the moment of drop-off, which is nothing — no invoice, no deposit, no fee for the shelf space. Everything about the deal is deferred to a sale that hasn't happened yet.

Why does sale or return put the risk on the person who dropped the copies off?

Because the shop pays only for what it actually sells, and owes nothing for the rest.

If none of the ten sell, the shop has lost nothing beyond a few weeks of shelf width it gave up. It can hand the unsold copies back, or in practice often just leaves them where they are until somebody asks. The person who made the copies paid for paper and printing before any of it came back to them, and the docket is the only thing recording that ten of their copies are sitting somewhere they can't see.

Is sale or return the same as giving the copies away?

No — it looks generous at the point of drop-off, but the terms still expect money back eventually.

Copies handed out deliberately, with no expectation of payment, are a decision about distribution. Sale or return is a decision about risk — the maker still wants paying, just later, and only for whichever copies a stranger actually chooses to buy off a shelf.

Why is the signature line still blank?

Because most of these arrangements ran on the docket existing, not on the docket being enforced.

A witnessed signature matters when somebody expects to need it later — in a dispute, in front of a third party. Nobody printing ten copies of anything is taking a shop to task over a handful of unsold stock through anything more formal than asking. The line was ruled because that's what a docket looks like. It stayed blank because nobody involved thought they'd need what it proves.

What happens if a shop keeps the copies and never pays for what sold?

Then the docket is the only proof the arrangement existed at all, and it doesn't do much beyond that.

The note that gets written afterwards, chasing a debt that's stopped being paid, is usually the next document in the sequence, not a replacement for this one. The docket was never a contract with teeth — it was a record kept in case the relationship stayed good enough that it never needed to be.

Can I use SOR and my own figures on a shirt?

Yes — the shorthand and the docket layout belong to nobody in particular.

A specific shop's actual printed docket, with its own letterhead and its own numbering, belongs to that business. A plain ruled docket with three fields and a signature line is a format, not a trademark, and writing your own count and your own terms on it is no different from filling one in by hand at a real counter. Your own ten, your own terms, your own zero.

Does this only work for printed copies?

No — anything countable and returnable can go out on the same terms.

Patches, badges, small run records, tapes: the shorthand doesn't care what the ten items are, only that they can be counted out, counted back, and that a shop is willing to hold them without paying first. What doesn't come back sometimes ends up stored rather than sold — the same stock, a different ending.

Does it print well?

Yes, and the two-sheet effect is what carries it.

This works best as two flat layers — the yellow top sheet as the base colour, the blue carbon edge as a single accent strip along one side — with the handwriting reproduced as a solid single ink rather than a fine line the fabric weave can't hold. Mustard, cream or another warm paper tone keeps the carbon-copy reading, and the embossed pressure marks translate better as a subtle texture pass than as line art.

How do I get one made?

Describe the docket at JustOG — the count, the terms, and what's written in the paid column. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

Nobody came back to sign it. The ten copies went out anyway.