Like most legislatures, Washington's indicates the effect the bill has on the current statutes by marking text to be deleted with strikethrough and new text with underlines. The Washington State Legislature also surrounds bill text to be deleted with double parentheses. For those accessing the ASCII text versions of bills (prior to the 2001-02 biennium), the strikethrough has been changed to {-   -} for stricken text and {+   +} for new text. For example, if you were to look at Substitute Senate Bill 5175 from the 1997 Session, you would see the following:

"To manufacture" shall not include{+ :  C +}onditioning of seed for use in planting{+ ; cubing hay or alfalfa; +} or activities which consist of cutting, grading, or ice glazing seafood which has been cooked, frozen{+ , +} or canned outside this state.

PLEASE NOTE: The ASCII text version of the bill is not line for line, page for page identical to an official copy of the bill. You must keep this in mind if you are working with an ASCII text version to prepare an amendment. For correct line and page endings, retrieve the PDF version of the bill.