Before encoding each word, the meaning of the word with respect to national policy must be determined. If national policy dictates that mandatory access control (MAC) must be performed based on the word (which is the case for compartments, subcompartments, SAPs, and SAPIs), or if a policy decision is made to treat a word as a compartment (for example, release markings on which it has been decided to perform MAC, such as REL CNTRY1 and REL CNTRY2 in Appendix B, Annotated Sample Encodings) then the word should be associated with compartment bits in the clearances and sensitivity labels sections of the encodings file, and possibly in the information label section as well. Such a word is called a MAC word. Instead, if the word does not directly enter into MAC decisions, but implies some other word that does, the word would appear only in information labels, be associated with both compartments and markings, and is called a MAC-related word. Finally, if the word has absolutely nothing to do with MAC, the word would appear only in information labels, be associated with only markings, and be called a non-MAC word.