> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.contracts.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Accepting is not signing > Agreeing to the terms and putting your name to them are two acts, and the paper always says which of the two has happened. Most software that moves a contract around treats agreement as one event. Somebody presses a button, something happens, and afterwards the file says signed. It is tidy, and it is wrong about the way people come to terms. ## The two acts **Accepting** is agreeing to the words. It is what happens when the other side reads a proposed change and says yes to it. It moves the contract into an agreed state, and an agreed contract is a real and useful thing: everybody knows what the deal is. **Signing** is putting your name to a version. It is a separate act, made by a person, on a specific set of words, at a specific moment. A contract can be agreed and unsigned. That is a normal state and the product draws it as one, rather than as an error on the way to a green tick. And `agreed` is not a one-way door: somebody opens a new question and the contract goes back to negotiating. Signatures already given go **held** — the words have not moved, so what those people signed still reads exactly as it did. ## Why the difference is load-bearing Because a signature has to bind to something that cannot move afterwards. They are two separate records in the model, not two values of one status field. An **Acceptance** is a party agreeing to a Version's words. A **Signature** is that party's name on the same hash of the same words — and it cannot exist without an Acceptance by the same party on the same hash, recorded no later. If the two were one state, either the signature would float free of the words, or an acceptance would be treated as a signature nobody meant to give. A paper can therefore sit **fully accepted and wholly unsigned**, and the model has a worked example that is exactly that: two versions, a proposal, a decision, an acceptance, and no signatures at all. ## What the paper says The paper always says which of the two has happened, and who did it. Not "signed off". Not a status pill that could mean either. The language in the product follows the same rule everywhere. Lex will say a change was accepted, or that a version was signed, and it will never round one into the other. Acceptance, Signature, and the three signature states. "Accepting is not signing" on the contracts.io blog.