Pronoun: Difference between revisions
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{{pe}}Lawyers don’t like pronouns because they (pronouns, that is, not lawyers) tend to be | {{pe}}Lawyers don’t like pronouns because they (pronouns, that is, not lawyers) tend to be short and idiomatic. | ||
This unnecessarily lowers the bar. Much better is repeated use of the [[noun]]s to which they (the [[pronoun]]s, not the {{tag|noun}}s) might, if they were used, relate. It doesn't change the semantic content much less the legal freighting, but it makes the any text just that little bit less penetrable to those without a direct financial incentive in the job of reading it. | |||
The official excuse has probably something to do with imprecision: “you” and “it” can ambiguously refer to the {{tag|subject}} or {{tag|object}} of a sentence: unlike those ultra-precise Germans, we Englanders only half-heartedly [[declension|decline]] our [[pronoun]]s. For all that, the English language — complete with [[pronoun]]s — works unambiguously well in most other linguistic contexts. Besides, lawyers have their own special form of {{tag|pronoun}}: the {{tag|definition}}. | The official excuse has probably something to do with imprecision: “you” and “it” can ambiguously refer to the {{tag|subject}} or {{tag|object}} of a sentence: unlike those ultra-precise Germans, we Englanders only half-heartedly [[declension|decline]] our [[pronoun]]s. For all that, the English language — complete with [[pronoun]]s — works unambiguously well in most other linguistic contexts. Besides, lawyers have their own special form of {{tag|pronoun}}: the {{tag|definition}}. | ||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*[[Chauvinist language]] | *[[Chauvinist language]] | ||
Revision as of 07:54, 21 November 2020
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Towards more picturesque speech™
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Lawyers don’t like pronouns because they (pronouns, that is, not lawyers) tend to be short and idiomatic.
This unnecessarily lowers the bar. Much better is repeated use of the nouns to which they (the pronouns, not the nouns) might, if they were used, relate. It doesn't change the semantic content much less the legal freighting, but it makes the any text just that little bit less penetrable to those without a direct financial incentive in the job of reading it.
The official excuse has probably something to do with imprecision: “you” and “it” can ambiguously refer to the subject or object of a sentence: unlike those ultra-precise Germans, we Englanders only half-heartedly decline our pronouns. For all that, the English language — complete with pronouns — works unambiguously well in most other linguistic contexts. Besides, lawyers have their own special form of pronoun: the definition.