A contractual term is "Any provision forming part of a contract".    Each term gives rise to a contractual obligation, breach of which can give rise to avoiding litigation. Not all terms are stated expressly and some terms carry less legal gravity as they are peripheral to the objectives of the contract.

There are various factors that a court may take into account in determining the nature of a statement. These include:

• Timing: If the contract was concluded soon after the statement was made, this is a strong indication that the statement induced the person to enter into the contract. Lapse of a week within the negotiations of a car sale was held to amount only to a representation in Routledge v McKay^[9]
• Content of statement: It is necessary to consider what was said in the given context, which has nothing to do with the importance of a statement.
• Knowledge and expertise: In Oscar Chess Ltd v. Williams, a person selling a car to a second-hand car dealer stated that it was a 1948 Morris, when in fact it was a 1939 model car. It was held that the statement did not become a term because a reasonable person in the position of the car dealer would not have thought that an inexperienced person would have guaranteed the truth of the statement.
• Reduction into Writing: Where the contract is consolidated into writing, previous spoken terms, omitted from the consolidation, will probably be relegated to representations.   The old case of Birch v Paramount Estates Ltd. provided that a very important spoken term may persist even if omitted from the written consolidation; this case concerned the quality of a residential house.