The contract itself — terms and parties

Abstract

Contractual terms will be negotiated by the parties and statements will be made in the course of those negotiations. These statements may eventually form part of the contract, in which case they will be express terms, or they may be made merely to induce the other party to enter the contract, in which case they will be representations. If the contract is reduced to writing, it is usually assumed that the written document represents the entire contract and it is usually clear what the terms are (the interpreta-tion of the terms may be a different matter, however). But in some cases, especially when the contract is made orally, it may be difficult to distin-guish between terms and representations.