How make text plain English

Step 1: look for telltale signs. They are not what you’d think.

• Average sentence length: Divide the number of words by the number of full stops. (It’s not a fully reliable indicator — lawyers like to punctuate lists with semi-colons — but it's a useful rule of thumb).
• Number of words per comnma: Divide the words by the number of commas. This will indicatge

Search for these words:

• by — indicates a likely passive construction
• or — indicates a laundry list to be shortened, or — ohhhhhh tyhe irony — some kind of option that you could de-clutter
• of — indicates a nominalisation (a compound verb - "effect the execution of" rather than "execute".)
• -ing — indicates a participle, and a compound verb
• -ly — indicates an adverb (a verb modifier) - look for a better verb

Dead words: delete dead phrases and any verbiage they carry with them: “whether or not”, “including”, “including but not limited to”, “for the avoidance of doubt”; “to the extent permitted by law”, “, or any other... ” “any and all” “of whatever nature”, “express or implied” “written or oral”,“whatever”, “however”, “howsoever”

Redundancies: Clear out any redundancies: “any and all” is “any”; “right, power or remedy” is “right”

Active, energetic writing: Use direct, active verbs:

• “the Receiving Party must ensure that the Confidential Information is protected and treated with the same degree of care that would apply to a Receiving Party’s own confidential information” becomes “the Receiving Party must treat the Confidential Information with the same care as it treats its own confidential information”

Get rid of over-descriptions - In almost all cases, you don't need to define “Affiliates” or, really, even mention them in a contract

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