An interpreter who reaches for meaning before reading the text has skipped a step that cannot be skipped. The article begins with the discipline of reading a statute in the order in which it was written: the title, the enacting clause, the definitional section, and the operative provisions in their proper sequence.
Part I addresses the definitional section as the key to the operative provisions. A term defined by the statute is defined for the statute; ordinary meaning yields to the definition the legislature has supplied.
Part II takes up the canons of construction. The article treats the canons as a working apparatus — tools that an interpreter applies and then accounts for — rather than a list of slogans deployed when convenient.
Part III concludes with the question of legislative purpose. Purpose is read out of the text and its structure, not into the text from the outside. Where the text is silent, the silence is part of the record.