The blue pencil doctrine is a legal concept in common law countries in which a court finds that portions of a contract are void or unenforceable, but other portions of the contract are enforceable. The blue pencil rule allows the legally valid enforceable provisions of the contract to stand despite the nullification of the legally void unenforceable provisions. The revised version, however, must still represent the original meaning. The rule may not be invoked, for example, to delete the word "not" and thereby change a negative to a positive.

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