Picture this: TILA rescission

One of the more important consumer protections is the right to rescind (or undo) a loan transaction. In general, this right is available for a refinancing in which a mortgage or other security interest is taken in someone's home.

The federal Truth-in-Lending Act (TILA) defines/gives this right in 15 U.S.C. §1635(a). The image at left depicts (by size) the frequency of uncommon words in that statute subsection. There are only 203 words total in the subsection, and fewer than half are "uncommon" — so the 80 shown include the one instance of "consumer" (in light blue, left of center).

At right is a comparable depiction of words in the entire statute section, 15 U.S.C. §1635 — which includes exceptions, how you exercise the right, what happens when you do, etc. The five appearances of "consumer" get only a small font size (in white, near the upper right corner), dwarfed by "section" (32 times) and "obligor" (27).

These images are of a Wordle, and are attributable to the wonderful http://www.wordle.net/.

Images created by the Wordle.net web application are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.