Avoid Language Quirks (Legal Writing)
Avoid Language Quirks (Legal Writing)
AT T Y. D EL FIN M. S UA R EZ J R .
J MC COL L EG E OF LAW
What’s a language quirk?
Language quirks are small distractions that draw your reader’s mind
from what you are saying to how you are saying it.
Most of what lawyers write is read by people, not because they want
to, but because they have to.
• Noun chains are likely to strangle the reader. Many readers will think
they’ve hit upon the noun when they’re still reading adjectives.
• Noun chain sometimes happen when we try too hard to improve our
writing by being overly concise.
• To eliminate noun chains, remember two rules:
• The last noun in the chain is the real noun, the word referring to the thing you’re
talking about. The information conveyed by this word usually needs to be at or
near the front of the phrase, not at the end.
• Although a noun can function as an adjective, other parts of speech or
grammatical structures, do a better job of modifying a noun.
• Push the last noun toward the front, making it the first or second
word in the phrase. You then convert the following nouns into
adjectives, prepositional phrases, or other grammatical structures
designed to serve as modifiers.
• For example:
• Before: sand transfer mitigation efforts
• After: efforts to mitigate sand transfer
• Feel free to use one noun to modify another, but don’t chain three or
more nouns together. Strive for conciseness, but don’t sacrifice
readability for it.
Avoid Multiple Negatives
Avoid multiple negatives
• Beware of sentences that contain more than one negative expression.
• The grammar is proper, but the construction is distracting – it makes
the reader’s mind flip from yes to no to yes.
• In addition to ordinary negative words and phrases (such as not, un-,
non-), many other words operate negatively (for example, terminate,
void, denial, except, unless and other than). If you string a few of these
negative words together, you can make the reader’s eye cross, like this:
• Provided however, that this license shall not become void unless the licensee’s
failure to provide such notice is unreasonable in the circumstances.
Avoid cosmic detachment
Avoid cosmic detachment
• Every legal problem involves people. Without people, there would be
no legal problems.
• Yet legal writing too often ignores people and address itself to some
bloodless, timeless cosmic void.
• When you find yourself struggling to express a complex legal idea,
remember to ask yourself the key question: “Who is doing what to
whom?” Bring those living creatures into your writing; make them
move around and do things to each other. Suddenly abstraction will
evaporate, and your writing will come alive.
• Remember too, that your reader is the most important person in the
universe – or at least your reader thinks so. Don’t be afraid to bring
the readers into your sentences, and don’t be afraid to call them
“you”. The personal form of address will help them understand how
the passage relates to them.
Based on the Rules, it is significant to have a witness declared hostile or unwilling because when a
witness is declared by the court as hostile or unwilling, then:
b) Such witness may be impeached and cross-examined by the adverse party; and
But note that the Rules of Court provided the abovementioned parameters in the sense that a
witness may be declared hostile only as against the party producing him. In other words, the fact of
hostility of the witness is only with reference to the party calling such witness.
The reason for this is logic. You need not have the adverse party (or his witnesses) be declared as
hostile witness (by reason of their adverse interest) since their testimony will naturally be hostile to the
you. When an adverse party calls himself or any of his witnesses to the witness stand, the other party can
always conduct his cross-examination, can always impeach his credibility and even ask of him leading
questions.
Use Strong Nouns and Verbs
Use Strong Nouns and Verbs
• In persuasive legal writing, it will be more potent if you use strong
nouns and verbs, not weak nouns and verbs held afloat by adjectives
and adverbs.
• Example:
• Do not choose a flaccid one and then try to prop it up with weak words like very
and quite:
• Examples:
Weak Strong
She was very, very angry. She was enraged.
This is quite puzzling This is baffling
• The effectiveness of your argument depends on how ably you write
up each statement of your argument into a convincing part. Don’t
rely too much on adjectives.
Avoid Sexist Language
Avoid Sexist Language
• On one hand, many readers, both men and women, will be distracted
and perhaps offended if you use masculine terms to refer to people
who are not necessarily male.
• On the other hand, many readers will be distracted by clumsy efforts
to avoid masculine terms.
• In recent years, some legal writers have started using only feminine
terms, but that too is distracting.
Four suggestions to avoid sexist language:
1. Don’t use expressions that imply value judgments based on sex.
Examples:
a manly effort
a member of the gentle sex
a feministic approach
2. Use sex-neutral terms if you can do so without artificiality.
Examples:
use workers instead of workmen
use reasonable person instead of reasonable man