 Following this alternative course of action, the reduction terminates with the same normal form as in the previous case. This fact, however, should not be taken for granted: A rewriting system is said to be (globally) confluent if and only if independently of the order in which its rules are applied every expression always ends up being reduced to its one and only normal form. It can be shown that (R1)–(R4) is confluent and, hence, we are entitled to say: “Compute the derivative of an expression” (as opposed to simply “a” derivative). Adding more rules to a system in an effort to make it more practical can have undesired consequences. For example, if we add the rule