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Plain English - How: Difference between revisions
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*Organise with a view to intuitive reading, for those with a short attention span, | *Organise with a view to intuitive reading, for those with a short attention span, | ||
*Key points at the front, less important/operational parts at the back. | *Key points at the front, less important/operational parts at the back. | ||
''' | '''Duplication/Redundancy''': reorganising the content, in turn, often reveals a good deal of duplication and redundancy, which then can be removed.<br> | ||
'''Separate out [[boilerplate]]''': Separating key terms from [[boilerplate]]: Separating boilerplate from key economic terms literally — putting them in separate documents so you can lock down the boilerplate and leave the key terms editable – makes a big difference. There are a number of advantages tp putting key economic terms, amendment to boilerplate terms, and any variables and elections in a separate document: | '''Separate out [[boilerplate]]''': Separating key terms from [[boilerplate]]: Separating boilerplate from key economic terms literally — putting them in separate documents so you can lock down the boilerplate and leave the key terms editable – makes a big difference. There are a number of advantages tp putting key economic terms, amendment to boilerplate terms, and any variables and elections in a separate document: | ||
*The key terms are now set out in a summary termsheet document that clients and operations teams can read without legal assistance | *The key terms are now set out in a summary termsheet document that clients and operations teams can read without legal assistance | ||
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===Sexist language=== | ===Sexist language=== | ||
You are writing for men and women. If you write “he” all the time you risk irritating half your audience. Writing “she” risks irritating the other half. Writing “s/he”, “he or she” or “it” risks irritating all of them. There are things you can do: | You are writing for men and women. If you write “he” all the time you risk irritating half your audience. Writing “she” all the time risks irritating the other half. Writing “s/he”, “he or she” or “it” risks irritating all of them. There are things you can do: | ||
*Write in the plural: Instead of “I am yet to meet a client who tells his lawyer to avoid write incomprehensibly” say “Clients don’t tell their lawyers to write incomprehensibly”. | *Write in the plural: Instead of “I am yet to meet a client who tells his lawyer to avoid write incomprehensibly” say “Clients don’t tell their lawyers to write incomprehensibly”. | ||
*Write in the first and second person: I’ve never had a client ask me to write incomprehensibly”. | *Write in the first and second person: I’ve never had a client ask me to write incomprehensibly”. | ||
*Do both: write in the first person plural: this is the beauty of “we” and “you” — both are beautifully gender neutral | |||
*If you can’t do any of the above, ''alternate''. I try to do this on this wiki, but being a fellow, but when in doubt, which is most of the time, I err in favour of “she” because I find that makes me think a bit harder about what I’m writing. The challenge with doing that, of course, when writing satire, is that it looks like some kind of political statement. For whatever it is worth, it isn’t. | |||
===[[Definitions]]=== | |||
===Definitions=== | |||
===Enumerations=== | ===Enumerations=== | ||
*'''Break into subparagraphs''': | *'''Break into subparagraphs''': | ||
*'''Branch right, not left''': | *'''Branch right, not left''': | ||
===Kill these first=== | ===Kill these first=== | ||