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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 ...]]}}{{quote|''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.'' | {{a|g|[[File:Rene Descartes.jpg|450px|thumb|center|I ''think'' this is [[René Descartes]]. But ...]] | ||
{{subtable|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}} | |||
}}}}{{quote|''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}}}} | :—Douglas Adams, {{hhgg}}}} | ||
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''? | 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''? | ||
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? | 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? | ||
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===Recursive doubt avoidance=== | ===Recursive doubt avoidance=== | ||
None of this will stop ninja-types on their crusade to exterminate doubt wherever they can find it. That elite force of lexical purists, {{icds}}, has in recent times begun ''nesting'' doubt-avoidance subroutines, presumably fearful that uncertainly might leech into a construction ''even during the process of driving it out''. | None of this will stop ninja-types on their crusade to exterminate doubt wherever they can find it. That elite force of lexical purists, {{icds}}, has in recent times begun ''nesting'' doubt-avoidance subroutines, presumably fearful that uncertainly might leech into a construction ''even during the process of driving it out''. | ||
How to ensure such second-order neurosis does not rot from the inside your legal superstructure, like some kind of insidious rising damp? | |||
Fear not, the JC, as ever, has your back: add this in, like a doubt-course membrane: | |||
{{quote|“For the avoidance of doubt this paragraph is meant to avoid doubt, and is not meant to alter or affect the foregoing passage, which does not, [[for the avoidance of doubt]] and notwithstanding this present clarification, introduce any doubt, (other than, for the avoidance of doubt, such previously-identified doubt as has been conclusively eliminated by doubt-avoiding effect of this present clarification)”.}} | {{quote|“For the avoidance of doubt this paragraph is meant to avoid doubt, and is not meant to alter or affect the foregoing passage, which does not, [[for the avoidance of doubt]] and notwithstanding this present clarification, introduce any doubt, (other than, for the avoidance of doubt, such previously-identified doubt as has been conclusively eliminated by doubt-avoiding effect of this present clarification)”.}} | ||