Read Plain Words for Free Online

(which
is already too long) to be increased still further by unnecessary labour in the preparing, and, still less, the polishing of drafts … But it is clear that there are ways of saying what is meant in shorter, plainer and better English.
    These pieces of advice are not irreconcilable. They relate to rather different types of communication, and both are no doubt wise. But I am sure that you should fear more the danger of putting out slipshod work by omitting to revise it than that of delaying public business by excessive polishing. Very few can write what they mean and affect their readers precisely as they wish without revising their first attempt. There is a happy mean between being content with the first thing that comes into your head, and the craving for perfection that makes a Flaubert spend hours or even days on getting a single sentence to his satisfaction. The article you are paid to produce need not be polished but it must be workmanlike.
    The official must use the written word for many different purposes. In Parliamentary Bills, Statutory Orders and other legal documents, precision is so important that these constitute a class apart with which this book is not concerned: the next chapter forms a brief digression to explain more fully why. But there are many other classes of official document—despatches to Her Majesty’s representatives abroad, reports of commissions and committees, circulars to local authorities and similar bodies, departmental instructions, minutes, and correspondence with other departments and with the public, as well as documents explaining the law to the millions for whom, beyond ordering their daily lives in countless ways, it now creates complicated personal rights and obligations—and when writing any of these the object of the official must be the same: to make the reader understand what is meant as readily and precisely as possible.

II
A Digression on Legal English
    Even when the counsel in chambers is merely ‘advising on a case,’ or drawing up a conveyance of property, he is really thinking of what view the court and its judges will take of his advice or his draftsmanship if any dispute arises upon them … The supreme test in every case is: ‘Will this stand the scrutiny of the court?’
    Stephen’s Commentaries on the Laws of

England
, 17th edition (1922)
    The obtrusive gracelessness of legal English arises from the necessity of being unambiguous, and that is by no means the same as being readily intelligible. On the contrary, the nearer you get to the one the further you are likely to get from the other.
    The reason why certainty of meaning must be the paramount aim in legal drafting is clear enough. Legal documents impose obligations and confer rights, and neither the parties to them nor those who draft the documents have the last word in deciding exactly what those rights and obligations are. That can only be settled in a Court of Law on the words of the document; but words, with their penumbra of meaning, are an imperfect instrument for expressing complicated concepts with certainty. It is the duty of all who draft these authoritative texts to try to imagine every possible combination of circumstances to which their words
might apply and every conceivable misinterpretation that might be put upon them, and to take precautions accordingly. When drafting, they must limit by definition words with a penumbra dangerously large, and amplify with a string of near-synonyms words with a penumbra dangerously small. They must eschew all pronouns when their antecedents might possibly be open to dispute, and circumvent every potential grammatical ambiguity. They must avoid all graces, and not be afraid of repetitions, while all the time keeping an eye on the rules of legal interpretation, and on the case law that concerns the meaning of particular words. No one can expect pretty writing from anyone thus burdened.
    The peculiarities of legal English are often used as a stick to beat