Correspondence Register
A sequential log of every formal letter in and out of a project — number, date, from, to, subject, references, and an action-by date. It is what makes a position findable, attributable and dated years later.
Letters carry positions; email carries coordination. In GCC consultant culture that distinction is kept rigorously, and the register is the mechanism: a numbered letter can be referenced by other letters, a gap in the sequence is a visible signal, and “our letter of the 14th” stops being a phrase and becomes a document.
The field most registers omit is the action-by date, and it is the one that turns an archive into a control. An incoming letter carrying a contractual response window is not a document to file — it is a clock, and an email will not remind you of anything.