The Rotterdam Rules have abandoned the traditional categorisation of transport documents(such as bills of lading,sea waybills,etc.) and adopted a more general form of terminology which is intended to allow greater flexibility and to facilitate the development and regulation of other forms of documents in due course,and to provide a form of regulation for electronic forms of transport documents.This article comments on the scope of these new provisions and on the possible impact that they may have on current trading and carriage operations by making a comparison between these provisions and those of existing regimes such as the Hague,Hague-Visby and Hamburg Rules. The Rotterdam Rules have abandoned the traditional categorization of transport documents (such as bills of lading, sea waybills, etc.) And adopted a more general form of terminology which is intended to allow greater flexibility and to facilitate the development and regulation of other forms of documents in due course, and to provide a form of and regulation for electronic forms of transport documents.This article comments on the scope of these new provisions and on the possible possible that they may have on current trading and carriage operations by making a comparison between these provisions and those of existing regimes such as the Hague, Hague-Visby and Hamburg Rules.