i guess the question would be better phrased - what's the difference between a boiler plate and a template? I thought it was the same thing.
No, boiler plate and template are totally different. Boiler plate means that it's a standard, relatively meaningless, formatted thing, like, say, a form letter that's sent out to everyone who inquires about something no matter what they inquire about, everyone gets the exact same boiler plate form letter with no individuality, no matter what. A template, on the other hand, is more like an outline, so, to continue with the comparison above, if everyone who inquired got a DIFFERENT response letter that was custom written just for them, but to make it simpler they made up a form letter that had blank spots in it for someone to write in the custom-tailored information, then that basic half-written document would be the template for all of the letters that were sent out. Good luck!... ?
Template is just the outline, boiler plate has all the purple prose included. They actually have somewhat different origins. In the days of hand set printing presses canned material (illustrations, inspirational poetry, advertixements, etc.) came in solid blocks of metal that were set into the press bed. These were fairly heavy and were compared to the thick plates of steel used to make steam boilers. Thus boilerplate came to mean formulaic material that takes up space without contributing meaning. Templates are full scale patterns used to lay out an assembly, so the use of this in writing is more obvious.
