Respondents to the Exposure Draft (ED) of the Operations Policy supported the use of bold lettering in order to identify ‘basic principles and essential procedures’. This was thought to demonstrate a commitment to ‘principles-based standards’ and avoided a ‘rule book’ approach to standard setting (see comment letters of Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), Fédérationsdes Experts Comptables Européens (FEE), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the UK Auditing Practices Board (UK APB) in IAASB, 2003c). The nature of ‘basic principles