Fine Print

That itsy, bitsy, teeny tiny...nope, no polka dots here: just a bunch of legalese and words you don’t know that you’re not going to spend all day looking up and trying to make sense of.

Fine print is the small print that comes with opting into a service or contract, such as contract agreements, conditions, and important user/customer disclosures. Usually, the fine print is so fine that it gets its own separate document.

It’s not uncommon for companies to put important stipulations and things in the fine print where consumers are unlikely to find them. It’s a place to hide things in the forest of small print and legalese...things companies have to tell consumers, but that they also hide from them. These are the things companies can point to after they get in trouble. The legal department can say “well, we told people the risks, right there in the fine print.”

Fine print can even impact things you’re not actually signing. For instance, if you’re trying to assess a company’s worth, their financial statements might be inflated if you don’t read the fine print of what accounting methods they used.

Nobody likes fine print, but we all put up with it, because...whatcha gonna do?

Regulations make companies do it to protect consumers, who then sign their lives away and don’t read it (because they can’t anyway). Yes, everything is working just fine. Fine as fine print.