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Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

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Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#281

Post by christophilus »

alar44 wrote: post #226
gault8121 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are the text complexity scores from different measures for this text. Flesch Reading Ease score: -24 (text scale) Flesch Reading Ease scored your text: impossible to comprehend. Gunning Fog: 40.7 (text scale) Gunning Fog scored your text: EXTREMELY difficult to read. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 35.7 Grade level: College Graduate and above. The Coleman-Liau Index: 13 Grade level: college The SMOG Index: 25 Grade…

Are you suggesting that our legal system should be understandable by the dumbest person? I don't see how that's feasible or desirable.

I think the Feynman technique would be an excellent improvement to the situation, so yes.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#282

Post by sseagull »

alar44 wrote: post #228
sseagull wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long, readable phrases (in literature, anyway) tend to be made up of independent clauses with semicolons, and are perfectly understandable (to me, anyway). I sometimes prefer long sentences in some forms of literature - short sentences can be choppy and halting. "He was indistinctly conscious that the pardon of this priest was the greatest assault and the most formidable attack which had moved him yet; that his obdur…

Those semicolons can be replaced with periods and negates your point. That's just a string of ideas, not really one logical sentence.

Sort of. If you remove semicolons and use periods, you have to remove the ‘that’ as well. Then, to me, the sentence loses its impact. Theres a parallelism that is artistic, and makes everything flow.

But in some sense this is art, not science; it shouldn’t be analyzed too much :)

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#283

Post by mrjin »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

When I was a kid, I was so naive and asked questions like "where there were so many obvious problems and they let them be for years?".

It's a shame that I did not realize it was never about right or wrong but rather interests until decades later.

So if you view it from a different perspective such as who will benefit from such wording, you will for sure get a much clearer picture.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#284

Post by Cthulhu_ »

alar44 wrote: post #226
gault8121 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are the text complexity scores from different measures for this text. Flesch Reading Ease score: -24 (text scale) Flesch Reading Ease scored your text: impossible to comprehend. Gunning Fog: 40.7 (text scale) Gunning Fog scored your text: EXTREMELY difficult to read. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 35.7 Grade level: College Graduate and above. The Coleman-Liau Index: 13 Grade level: college The SMOG Index: 25 Grade…

Are you suggesting that our legal system should be understandable by the dumbest person? I don't see how that's feasible or desirable.

No, but it should not be intentionally obfuscated either; there's a middle ground.

But it should be simplified if it's intended to be read and comprehended by the general public. This is an issue now with terms of service and contracts, to the point where people who cannot comprehend the language are being exploited.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#285

Post by Cthulhu_ »

oblio wrote: post #126
bluechair wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've rewritten the clause by moving "prepositional phrases" into the noun phrases to avoid as much nesting as possible. For example, instead of saying "the husband of the woman, I'd replace it with the woman's husband." Here's what I think it says: "This constitutional amendment authorizes the legislature to set the ad valorem taxes total reduction amounts that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary publ…

Aren't such long phrases horrible writing, kind of by default?

Kind of, however (and I'm not a native speaker) if it would be simplified, it would also be longer / multiple paragraphs, which will also put some people off of reading / comprehending it - especially these days, where a lot of people have very short attention spans when it comes to reading.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#286

Post by denton-scratch »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #252
alar44 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that our legal system should be understandable by the dumbest person? I don't see how that's feasible or desirable.

No: That'd be impossible. But it is reasonable to have these sorts of things understandable to the average high school graduate and to the average retiree (different schooling, different mental statuses). And by average, I truly mean that the range of average should be able to read it so that comprehension should be widespread. If your average high school graduate cannot comprehend it, your wording is too difficult,…

It seems too obvious to be worth saying: the law should be simple enough to understand that people of good will can comply with it without engaging a lawyer.

Very few of us have a lawyer in our back-pocket nowadays. Sure, laws regulating some kinds of financial transactions and contracts are necessarily going to be complicated and hard to understand. But the general rule should be "If the law isn't something an ordinary person could be expected to know, then they aren't bound by it". That would put an end to clever-clever legal drafting.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#287

Post by denton-scratch »

bluechair wrote: post #117
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

I've rewritten the clause by moving "prepositional phrases" into the noun phrases to avoid as much nesting as possible. For example, instead of saying "the husband of the woman, I'd replace it with the woman's husband." Here's what I think it says: "This constitutional amendment authorizes the legislature to set the ad valorem taxes total reduction amounts that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary publ…

Thanks, but that's not much help!

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#288

Post by denton-scratch »

AlbertCory wrote: post #201
sseagull wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long, readable phrases (in literature, anyway) tend to be made up of independent clauses with semicolons, and are perfectly understandable (to me, anyway). I sometimes prefer long sentences in some forms of literature - short sentences can be choppy and halting. "He was indistinctly conscious that the pardon of this priest was the greatest assault and the most formidable attack which had moved him yet; that his obdur…

semi-colons do help, as does numbering. Using the "and" also helps.

An awful lot of people don't know how to use or interpret semicolons, including lawyers and judges. The best use of semicolons is to designate the timing of prose that is supposed to be spoken (or read as if it was meant to be spoken). In that sense a semicolon is a bit like a comma - it denotes timing and "breath".

When they are used to group ideas, commas and semicolons tend to encourage long, complex utterances that might be ambiguous, and at any rate are harder to parse. If it's important that an utterance be clear, just use simple language.

Expressing complex ideas in simple language is hard - you have to get the ideas perfectly clear in your head. If you still can't express those ideas in simple language, try again to get them clear. Don't draft any laws until you can do that.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#289

Post by antiterra »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

At least some of the issue is a state constitutional requirement that propositions be one sentence.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#290

Post by thfuran »

Victerius wrote: post #136
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

> I have an Ivy League education and I still could hardly understand it Downvote for arrogance. An Ivy League education doesn't mean you're smarter.

Yes, it takes true arrogance to admit that you don't understand something.
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