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For the avoidance of doubt: Difference between revisions
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::<small>—Douglas Adams, {{hhgg}}</small> | ::<small>—Douglas Adams, {{hhgg}}</small> | ||
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A [[mediocre lawyer|solicitor]] — one 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. | A [[mediocre lawyer|solicitor]] — one 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. Even as a piece of English it is hideous: what kind of fiend [[Nominalisation|converts]] “avoid” into a [[noun]]? what kind of glass-half-empty misanthrope sets as his guiding objective the negative one of ''not being confusing''? | ||
“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? | {{sideboxtop|width=50|align=right|background=#F2F2CE}} | ||
The [[JC]] likes to rush in, as you know, where fools fear to tread. So let us try to achieve what Descartes could not. If you cannot ''avoid'' it, at least put a ''name'' on it. So let us — [[for the avoidance of doubt]] — thoroughly define what we ''mean'' by “[[doubt]]”: | |||
===The meaning of doubt=== | |||
{{ftaod}} | |||
{{tablebottom}} | |||
Why not say, positively, “to be clear”? I’ll tell you why not: because that would be to concede that, until now, one has ''not'' been. “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 — this is, honest to God, a real-life example: | This is how it usually plays — this is, honest to God, a real-life example: | ||
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Yet, ''what is doubt''? What is this existential flummery, that fogs our interior on even the sunniest day? Whence that numbing smoke that more thickly fills our mortal cockpit, day by day? | Yet, ''what is doubt''? What is this existential flummery, that fogs our interior on even the sunniest day? Whence that numbing smoke that more thickly fills our mortal cockpit, day by day? | ||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*{{tag|profound ontological uncertainty}} | *{{tag|profound ontological uncertainty}} | ||
{{published}} | {{published}} | ||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} | ||