Those who enjoy parsing and analysing will spend happy hours over the texts of the Belfast Agreement and this week's declaration by the Irish and British governments.
In the end, what the analysts make of the material may depend on the points from which they set out to examine it.
Supporters of the agreement will continue to believe that it represents Northern Ireland's best chance of a peaceful and prosperous future. The agreement's critics will continue to complain of bias and fudge.
There are, indeed, some points on which it may be argued that changed wording reveals (or conceals) changes in content.
Commentators and critics of the agreement draw attention to the phrase: "This will see some arms put beyond use on a voluntary basis" in the context of a collective act of reconciliation.
They interpret it as a softer approach than the demilitarisation which was first proposed and the decommissioning on which the Ulster Unionist Party insisted and Sinn Fein found impossible to concede.
But how does it differ from David Trimble's statement in Oslo that what was required was a credible start to decommissioning? This, too, would have seen some arms put beyond use in a manner verified by Gen John de Chastelain's international commission.
And the words "on a voluntary basis" are clearly intended to reassure republicans who, quite reasonably, take exception to any suggestion of surrender. In any event, it's difficult to imagine how decommissioning could be achieved on an involuntary basis.
Arguments are raised, too, about the statement "that decommissioning is not a precondition but an obligation on parties deriving from their commitment to the agreement".
Here anti-agreement unionists argue that an obligation is not necessarily a precondition while republican sceptics point out that the agreement speaks of neither precondition nor starting date.
It has always been plain, however, that the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons could not be completed by May 2000, as the agreement insists, if a start were to be greatly delayed.
And whether something is called a precondition or an obligation has more to do with partisan susceptibilities than with reality.
The danger of the war of words, which is likely to increase in fury and frustration during the next 10 days, is that it could give anti-agreement forces an excuse they scarcely need to turn an argument into a shooting match.
Loyalist paramilitaries have taken responsibility for attacks on the homes of Catholics both before and during this week's discussions. And Jim Cusack wrote here on Thursday of the activities of republicans opposed to the agreement, whom the Garda suspects of preparing bombs for use in Northern Ireland.
These are the groups which, on the loyalist side, took their lead from the militants of Portadown and, under the banners of republicanism, attempted to bomb several towns in Down and Armagh before their attack on Omagh.
Activists like these rarely take part in discussions - their voices are heard in bullet and bomb - but even the continuing debate among members of Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA is hard to follow.
The language of politics is often intended to conceal as much as it reveals, to protect those who use it by confusing their audiences and to leave speakers free to interpret words at will.
This is all very well if you have a captive audience: the Bulgarian leader Zhivkov, who I once heard in Sofia, didn't need to be understood because it didn't matter a damn whether his audience believed him or not. But that was his downfall. The debating style at which Sinn Fein leaders are adept sounds like a poor translation from Zhivkov's Bulgarian.
The discipline is impressive: the party line is followed to a T. As often as not, communication is nil. The rhetoric of Sinn Fein in many respects is similar to that of the DUP. First, there's a tendency to claim that the party speaks for everyone: the Irish people or the nationalists in one case, the people of Northern Ireland or the Protestants in the other. Then, there's a habit of relying on threadbare cliche: once a phrase begins, the listener knows exactly where it's going to end.
When you hear that someone is in favour of removing all the guns from politics or that what's needed is to create the conditions for a peaceful resolution . .
you can take it that any hope of a rational discussion is already dead.
One of the great achievements of the year since the negotiation of the Belfast Agreement has been that the claims of Sinn Fein and the DUP to speak for nationalism or unionism have been cut down to size.
Nothing is heard these days of the pan-nationalist front, a term devised by Sinn Fein to suggest a form of unity stretching from Fianna Fail and the SDLP to the IRA, with the Provisionals in the lead due to their frontline positions.
The electoral mandates of Sinn Fein and the DUP are undeniable: their support has made them the third and fourth parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly. But the majority of people on this island have shown they support Bertie Ahern's view that what the country does not need is an armed peace; a view fully endorsed across party lines by John Bruton and Ruairi Quinn.
AND a clear majority in Northern Ireland supports an aim expressed by David Trimble but shared by Seamus Mallon and John Hume - to build a community at ease with itself.
Some who should know better persist in the view that an armed peace is either necessary or desirable. Albert Reynolds, for instance, was to be heard on Wednesday announcing that conditions in Portadown were "not conducive to decommissioning." He appeared to suggest that if the Provisional IRA - and the loyalist paramilitaries - retained their weapons, they would prevent assaults and intimidation. But who has been responsible for most of the assaults and intimidation of which organisations like Families Against Intimidation and Terror complain? The very people that Mr Reynolds would call upon to protect the community. In his view decommissioning can wait.
But that's not how the two governments and the majority of the Northern parties see it. They agreed to an act of reconciliation which would, at once, mobilise public opinion behind the agreement and ensure that those willing to meet its commitments were seen to be so.
Mr Ahern and his colleagues have other serious concerns just now. They include doubts cast on his version of events being examined by the Flood tribunal and the astonishing difficulties presented by the Sheedy case.
The Government must nevertheless lead this State and our community in the act of reconciliation. It's not as if we had no part in the making of the problem now edging towards resolution.
Nor can we pretend that our obligations will be met by formal statements or ceremonies conducted by churches which have themselves been a source of division.
As many people as possible, in voices as diverse as possible, must have their say.
