Massachusetts Land Surveyor seal requirements: size, wording, and the rule that sets them

Yes — this is the one thing a civil engineer's seal cannot cover. 250 CMR 5.01(2)(a) lets a professional engineer qualified in the branch of civil engineering perform land surveying incidental to engineering work relative to locating or relocating fixed works, but expressly excludes the determination of property lines. 250 CMR 5.01(2)(b) then provides that the delineation of existing or proposed structures, features or boundaries relative to property lines requires the determination of property lines and therefore must be performed by a Professional Land Surveyor. A plan that ties anything to a property line needs the surveyor's seal, whatever else is on the sheet. (250 CMR 5.01(2)(a) and (b))

No. The land surveyor's format at 250 CMR 5.03(1)(b) lists exactly four items — the words "Commonwealth of Massachusetts", the Registrant's name, the Registrant's registration number, and the words "Professional Land Surveyor" — and, unlike the engineer's format in the paragraph immediately above it, offers no optional Licensed Branch line. The two seals are otherwise built to the same specification and the same approximately 1½ inch outside diameter, so the branch line is the whole of the difference. (250 CMR 5.03(1)(b); 250 CMR 5.03(1)(a) and (2))

With a comment placed near the seal but never through it. 250 CMR 5.03(12) makes the Registrant responsible for all work on any plan bearing the Registrant's seal unless responsibility is expressly and properly limited, and 5.03(13) requires suitable comments to be added near, but not through, the seal — the rule's own examples of what may be carved out include property boundaries, a specified portion of the document, or a specified change. Writing the limitation across the seal is doubly wrong, since 5.03(6) separately requires the signature to be adjacent to and not obscuring the seal. (250 CMR 5.03(12) and (13); 250 CMR 5.03(6))