1. General Information

Key Links

The Case Description and Case Notes should follow standardized administrative guidelines to provide clear and consistent communication to all parties reviewing the LOA.

  1. Terminology: The use of consistent terminology throughout the document is necessary to avoid confusion for the customer or U.S. Government personnel reviewing an LOA document. To the extent possible, the terminology used should be adopted from the DSAMS fields and/or the LOA column headings, and utilize the limited character spacing in certain DSAMS fields.

    Do Use Don't Use

    Months of Service (MOS)

    Period of Performance (PoP) / Availability/ Lead-time / Performance Period / Dates of Service

    Source Code (SC)

    Source of Supply (SOS) Code (SC)

    U.S. Government

    USG

    Purchaser (FMS)
    Benefitting Country (BPC)

    Customer

    Materiel (military materials and equipment)

    Material (substance or substances of which a thing is made or composed; crude or raw matter)

    Case Description

    Preamble

    Line

    Line Item

  2. Capitalization:A specific title or name should always be capitalized.

    Example:
    Correct   Incorrect

    Line 001

    vs

    line 001

    References to titles of position (Wing Commander), specific documents or lines, organizations (Department of Defense), military units (AFLCMC/WI), and acronyms (i.e. Letter of Request (LOR)).

    Specific columns or sections of the document which are being affected such as Delivery Term Code (DTC), Offer Release Code (ORC), etc.

    Refer to Section 3 (Case Description) for further details and exceptions.

  3. Punctuation: Use proper punctuation to make sentences and paragraphs easy to read. Character space is limited in many of the online entries for case documents. When listing a series of consecutive numbers a dash (-) is used, with no spaces, to simplify and save character space.

    Example:
    Correct   Incorrect

    Lines 001-005

    vs

    Lines 001, 002, 003, 004, and 005

    Sublines 001a-c

    vs

    Sublines 001a, 001b, and 001c

  4. Grammar: Apply proper grammar in a way that clearly communicates intent.

    Present Tense: Describe actions using present tense such as: “are” vs. “were” or “has been”; “is” vs. “was”, etc.

  5. Acronyms: Acronyms must be spelled out the first time they are used in the Case Description, each Line Description and in each Case Note, capitalizing the first letter of each word, followed by the acronym in parentheses. An acronym is spelled out in the note title and the 1st occurrence within the note text.

    Example

    Military Articles and Services List (MASL)

    EXCEPTION: In the DSAMS Customer Reference field, the customer’s reference does not need to be spelled out. It can be reflected as an acronym because the customer is already familiar with their own organizational acronyms.

  6. Date Format: Dates must be reflected in the Day/Month/Year format. The month should always be spelled out.

    Example

    17 March 2020

  7. Proofread: Proofread and ensure all documentation is free of spelling and grammatical errors throughout all phases of LOA development. As noted above, everyone involved in the LOA development process is responsible for ensuring the highest quality at each phase to avoid unnecessary processing delays.

    SUGGESTION: Build LOA verbiage within Microsoft Word, use the “Spelling and Grammar” function, then cut and paste into DSAMS. Due to conversion issues between Microsoft Word and DSAMS, adjust any spacing and character errors accordingly.