Getting started

On this rule, silence is a permission

On this page9

Five times in one section the rule permits an omission And in each place the condition is the same So the blank carries the information The rule states that consequence outright Which inverts the way a catalog reads a blank Both can be true at once because they are about different things There is no equivalent on our own shelf That difference is the whole reason this page exists References

A blank is a claim. Which is the opposite of how a catalog treats a blank.

Five times in one section the rule permits an omission

Water temperature, drying temperature, ironing temperature, bleaching and drycleaning solvent. In each place the text says the label need not mention the thing.

And in each place the condition is the same

The omission is allowed precisely when the harshest version of that procedure will not harm the product. Not when the manufacturer does not know. When it is safe.

So the blank carries the information

A care label that says machine wash and stops has said something definite about water temperature by saying nothing about it.

The rule states that consequence outright

When no temperature is given, hot water up to 145 degrees F may be regularly used. The number is in the definitions section, not in the labeling section, which is worth noticing: it is defined as part of what the words mean rather than as a requirement about what to print.

Which inverts the way a catalog reads a blank

This business runs on the principle that an absent field degrades gracefully and an invented one gets acted on as though it were true. Part 423 is built the other way around. The absent field is the one that gets acted on, and that is the design.

Both can be true at once because they are about different things

A catalog blank is a record of what was not captured. A part 423 blank is a statement the manufacturer chose to make in the negative. The second is only safe because a federal rule assigns it a meaning in advance.

There is no equivalent on our own shelf

Nineteen of the 251 containers on this shelf record no neck finish and 250 of 251 record no liner. Neither blank means anything. Nobody has defined what an unrecorded neck finish is permission to do, and so it is not permission to do anything.

That difference is the whole reason this page exists

It is easy to read a missing value as a small negative. Part 423 is the demonstration that a missing value can be a large positive, if and only if something external has already said what the absence means.

References

16 CFR 423.6(b)(1) and (b)(2), which permit an omission in five places: "if the regular use of hot water up to 145 degrees F (63 degrees C) will not harm the product, the label need not mention any water temperature"; "if the regular use of a high temperature will not harm the product, the label need not mention any drying temperature"; "if the regular use of a hot iron will not harm the product, the label need not mention any ironing temperature"; "If all commercially available bleaches can safely be used on a regular basis, the label need not mention bleaching"; and "if all commercially available types of solvent can be used, the label need not mention any types of solvent." 16 CFR 423.1(d) states the consequence: "When no temperature is given, e.g., warm or cold, hot water up to 145 degrees F (63 degrees C) can be regularly used." law.cornell.edu

The Davis Pack Supply catalog, measured 19 October 2026. 539 rows on this shelf: 251 containers and 288 closures. Capacity 5 to 500 mL with a median of 177, and every one of the 251 carries a capacity. Three materials only: 117 PET, 78 polypropylene, 56 glass. Four categories: 210 jars, 27 bottles, 12 tubs and pails, 2 tubes. Twenty five container families, the largest being PET Single Wall Jar at 101 and eleven of them holding a single row, and eighteen subcategories, the largest being Single Wall Jars at 127. This is the store-small-dry shelf and nine use case groups draw on it identically.

Written from 16 CFR part 423 and from the catalog as it stood on 19 October 2026. Part 423 is the Care Labeling Rule and it governs the permanent care label on textile wearing apparel and certain piece goods; it does not govern notions, and nothing here says it does. Nothing here states what temperature any particular notion tolerates, what instruction any garment may carry, or that any container is suitable for textile storage in any regulated sense. This shelf is shared identically by nine groups and this property is where it is enumerated in full.