Modern Legal Writing
| Publication year | 2023 |
| Pages | 10 |
Simplifying Our Writing
Choosing Common Words
BY JOHN HISKI RIDGE
In 1998, the president of the United States issued the following directive to the heads of the executive departments and agencies: The Federal Government's writing must be in plain language. By using plain language, we send a clear message about what the Government is doing, what it requires, and what services it offers. Plain language saves the Government and the private sector time, effort, and money. Plain language requirements vary from one document to another, depending on the intended audience. Plain language documents have logical organization, easy-to-read design features, and use:
• common, everyday words, except for necessary technical terms;
• “you'' and other pronouns;
• the active voice; and
• short sentences.[1]
As part of the plain language movement, this directive was given to simplify the language in statutes, rules, regulations, and other government documents. And it worked. Many of our laws are now clearer and more readily understood. The movement has also assisted lawyers throughout the country, causing legal educators and writing experts to turn their attention to helping us simplify the language in our briefs, contracts, memos, and letters.
I'm occasionally asked about methods for simplifying our legal writings. This article, which is the first in a series, is designed to do just that. Here we focus on replacing complex words and phrases with words that are easily understood.
Choosing a Common Word
Long before the 1998 presidential directive, Aristotle discussed the need for plain language:
"Style to be good must be clear, as is proved by the fact that speech which fails to convey a plain meaning will fail to do just what speech has to do."[2] Said differently, plain language does a better job of explaining and convincing than complex language.
Taking Aristotle's advice to heart, Table 1 contains a list of needlessly complex words and phrases and their plain-language substitutes. There are many similar lists available in grammar books and on the Internet, and I recommend them to you.
According to Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, the phrase "the fact that" is an "especially debilitating expression" and should be stricken from every sentence in which it occurs.[3] Table 2 shows some of the authors' suggestions for...
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