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Plain English in ten little words: Difference between revisions
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===[[Including]]=== | ===[[Including]]=== | ||
Parentheticals that, by definition, add nothing: [[including]], [[without limitation]], [[for the avoidance of doubt]]. | Parentheticals that, by definition, add nothing: [[including]], [[without limitation]], [[for the avoidance of doubt]]. | ||
=== | ===And=== | ||
Conjunctions are often a tell that you are jamming too many concepts into a single sentence. Or that you are overflowing with ideas that you haven’t pruned down to the necessary. JC does this a lot. Usually, one or other of the alternatives can safely go. | |||
===[[Deemed|Deem]]=== | ===[[Deemed|Deem]]=== | ||
Avoid legal tics and [[Latinism]]s: Things that you might be able to [[Special pleading|justify]] on tendentious logical grounds, but which ''don’t make a damn of difference in the real world''. So it might be true that a redemption amount is “[[an amount equal to]] the final price” — yes, it is true the redemption amount isn’t, from a brutalised [[ontological]] perspective, ''the'' final price; in the conceptual scheme they are different things, but they’re identical, and you lose nothing, except a few dead scales of [[Pedantry|pedantic]] skin, by saying the “redemption amount ''is'' the final price”. Likewise “this shall be [[deemed]] to be that” what, practically is the difference between “being deemed to be something”, or (worse) “being deemed to be an amount equal to something” and just “''being'' something”?<ref>Exception to the rule which proves it: “[[equivalent]]”. Here there is a real-world difference — at least in that purblind topsy-turvy world occupied by accountants. It all relates to the difference between a [[title transfer]] and a [[pledge]]. Note: this might be ''me'' [[special pleading]]. </ref> But the principle remains: ''unless there is a hard-edged legal, accounting or tax distinction between a tedious and a plain articulation, use the plain one.'' | Avoid legal tics and [[Latinism]]s: Things that you might be able to [[Special pleading|justify]] on tendentious logical grounds, but which ''don’t make a damn of difference in the real world''. So it might be true that a redemption amount is “[[an amount equal to]] the final price” — yes, it is true the redemption amount isn’t, from a brutalised [[ontological]] perspective, ''the'' final price; in the conceptual scheme they are different things, but they’re identical, and you lose nothing, except a few dead scales of [[Pedantry|pedantic]] skin, by saying the “redemption amount ''is'' the final price”. Likewise “this shall be [[deemed]] to be that” what, practically is the difference between “being deemed to be something”, or (worse) “being deemed to be an amount equal to something” and just “''being'' something”?<ref>Exception to the rule which proves it: “[[equivalent]]”. Here there is a real-world difference — at least in that purblind topsy-turvy world occupied by accountants. It all relates to the difference between a [[title transfer]] and a [[pledge]]. Note: this might be ''me'' [[special pleading]]. </ref> But the principle remains: ''unless there is a hard-edged legal, accounting or tax distinction between a tedious and a plain articulation, use the plain one.'' | ||