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For the avoidance of doubt: Difference between revisions
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{{ | {{a|g|[[File:Rene Descartes.jpg|450px|thumb|center|I ''think'' this is [[René Descartes]]. But ...]]}} | ||
:''And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super-computer which was so amazingly intelligent that even before its databanks had been connected up it had started from “[[I think, therefore I am]]” and got as far as deducing the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off.'' | |||
::—Douglas Adams, {{hhgg}} | |||
A [[mediocre lawyer|solicitor]] — one who is licensed in the practice of semantic precision, after all — can scarcely indicate unconditional surrender to the demands of the English language more clearly than by using this abominable phrase. | |||
“You had one job”, so the saying goes, and as an officer of Her Majesty’s courts, that job was to craft your prose in a way that ''didn’t contain doubt in the first place''. For what is the point of a {{tag|contract}} if not to clear up the confusion so readily left by the primordial grunts, nods and inarticulate mumblings of merchants as they interact with each other? | “You had one job”, so the saying goes, and as an officer of Her Majesty’s courts, that job was to craft your prose in a way that ''didn’t contain doubt in the first place''. For what is the point of a {{tag|contract}} if not to clear up the confusion so readily left by the primordial grunts, nods and inarticulate mumblings of merchants as they interact with each other? | ||
This is how it usually plays<ref>This is, honest to God, a real-life example</ref>: | This is how it usually plays<ref>This is, honest to God, a real-life example</ref>: | ||
:''The [[Chargor]] assigns and agrees to assign absolutely, [[subject to]] the [[proviso]] for re-assignment on redemption, all of its rights in respect of the Assigned Receivables, together with the benefit of any security granted to the [[Chargor]] thereof (and together in all cases, [[for the avoidance of doubt]], with the proceeds thereof).'' | |||
{{ftaod | Yet, what is doubt? What is this existential flummery, that fogs the interior on an apparently sunny day? Whence the smoke that more thickly fills our mortal cockpit, day by day? If you cannot ''avoid'' it, at least put a ''name'' on it. And let us at least do it properly — [[for the avoidance of doubt]] — thoroughly define what we ''mean'' by “[[doubt]]”: | ||
}} | |||
:{{ftaod}} | |||
{{ | {{sa}} | ||
*{{tag|profound ontological uncertainty}} | *{{tag|profound ontological uncertainty}} | ||
{{published}} | {{published}} | ||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} | ||