h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I had a short presentation today on how to write short business proposals. Clearly they are legal documents, so you have to be very careful about what you commit to, and what you are going to charge for it. What I found most enlightening, though, was the language you have to use.

These days, we avoid legalese in these documents - it would put the customer off signing them - they would think we were hiding something behind all those fancy words. We also have to avoid the worst kind of sales promises, as these can be legally binding too. Instead we have to be very simple. It's interesting to compare the language you would use in a proposal as compared to a guide entry, say.

In creative writing, repetition is unwelcome. It's very boring to read. We need to find lots of synonyms ("the Pope", "the pontiff", "his holiness", etc) to make the article flow. In a proposal, however, it's dangerous to use synonyms. If I said "the programs" at one point and "the software" at another, then a court of law could decide these were two separate things.

Capitalisation is important, as it's used for terms with legal definitions. To cover myself legally, just about every noun will be capitalised, and defined in the appendix. I often wonder how Germans write legal documents when their nouns are capitalised anyway.

Sentences have to be short in a legal document. Also, we have to use conditional tenses (we would) rather than future (we will). We will can mean we're going to do it whether they sign the agreement or not.

Finally we mustn't use all sorts of superlative phrases. One example is 'best endeavours'. If I say we will use 'best endeavours' to fix something, then it instantly becomes my employer's top priority. Legally, we would have to go as far as liquidating the company in our attempts to fix it.

So this is 'best practice'?

I've noticed in recent years that the software licenses that you have to click on to accept have shorn a lot of their legalese. Not that I read them .

Hm. The spellchecker doesn't like 'shorn'. Am I wrong?

*nods*

I have nothing to add, but I do actually find that interesting.

Deb

Asteroid Lil, Those software licences, I am probably the only person on the planet who reads them. Essentially they say that the company is not to blame for anything that happens, and you are. Including global warming, and if this in any way impacts on the profits of the company they have the right to sell anyone related to you within three degrees of family relationship into slavery. Clicks OK.

How about that recent story her in the US about a woman "fined" $3500 (iirc) for posting a bad review of a service? There is some debate as to whether the version of their legal clickthru actually contained the relevant clause at the time she signed up. They didn't threaten her with the fine until 2 years later.

The worst use of 'legal lingo' I've come across was a tenancy agreement a landlady had given to a foreign tenant.

To people who knew about housing law, it was an attempt to deny the tenant his statutory rights but it was written in the most flowery language it took a lot of unravelling.

[Amy P]

Shorn is a perfectly cromulent word.

'Cromulent'?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqW5XTuRp_8