Beg the question
"Beg the question" does not mean "raise the question." Or at least it should not be used to mean that. I fear we have lost on this one, though.
posted by Wayne Schiess at 10:26 AM
Legalwriting.net
Wayne Schiess's legal-writing blog. Home is here: Legalwriting.net
Friday, August 24, 2007
previous posts
- Overdeleting that
- Do jurors understand "unanimous"?
- Book recommendation
- Eclectic
- A new book on legal writing
- Preaching against passive voice--passively
- Sounding scholarly--or not
- Sentence problems? Help me out.
- Austin Lawyer magazine: Changes in legal writing
- Academic writing by legal-writing teachers
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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