Choosing the right words for your contract is a negotiation in itself. Five guidelines will help you achieve greater precision.

When negotiators sign on the dotted line, they sometimes worry about the wrong concerns.

“Did I overpay?” wonders the buyer as he inks the sales agreement.

Across the table, the seller is thinking, “I bet if I’d pushed a little harder, I would have gotten more.”

Yet it’s the words that surround the numbers that often are more important—and harder to get right. Take a simple real-estate deal. Isn’t it better to sell your condo for $400,000than for $375,000? Not if the higher-priced deal is contingent on the purchaser’s sale of her current place. Likewise,the lowest price isn’t necessarily the best for the buyer if it doesn't include exit provisions for a bad title or termites.