Annette Gordon-Reed & Peter S. Onuf, Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination (W.W. Norton & Co. 2016).
In information technology, a boilerplate is a unit of writing that can be reused over and over without change. By extension, the idea is sometimes applied to reusable programming as in boilerplate code. The term derives from steel manufacturing, where boilerplate is steel rolled into large plates for use in steam boilers.
Boilerplate language may also exist in pre-created form letters on the Internet for such things as issues to be broached by a politician based on an issue ad, requests that a cable or satellite operator add a cable network to a system, pre-written complaints about a product that is opposed by groups that create such letters, or online petitions.