Plain English: do you understand what you're writing?
He that busily hunteth after affected words and followeth the strong scent of great swelling phrases is many times at a dead loss of the matter itself.
posted by Wayne Schiess at 2:08 PM
Legalwriting.net
Wayne Schiess's legal-writing blog. Home is here: Legalwriting.net
Thursday, September 14, 2006
previous posts
- The memo: reader aids
- The memo: formal parts
- A Dean's mistakes
- The memo: title and caption
- The memo: page numbers, footers
- Latin: commenters speak
- Legal Writing: 8 things you can do
- Plain English: it's possible
- The memo: text layout
- Plain English: write for the nonlawyer
Wayne's books
[Plain language] has a bad name among some lawyers. This is usually because they don't understand enough about it to judge it properly. --Michele M. Asprey, Plain Language for Lawyers 11 (2d ed., Federation Press 1996).
A related bonus of a plain language style is the potential for reducing mistakes. Traditional legal language tends to hide inconsistencies and ambiguities. Errors are harder to find in dense and convoluted prose. Removing legalese helps lay bare any oversights in the original. --Peter Butt & Richard Castle, Modern Legal Drafting: A Guide to Using Clearer Language 89 (Cambridge U. Press 2001).
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