Legal Writing Style by Antonio Gidi & Henry Weihofen

Author:Antonio Gidi & Henry Weihofen
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781634592963
Publisher: West Academic Publishing
Published: 2018-03-27T21:00:00+00:00

Sometimes the difference is merely a shade of meaning.

Modifiers preceding or following a series are likely to create ambiguity. Suppose a regulation says that it applies to “all domestic corporations or partnerships engaged in intrastate commerce.”

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Does it apply to all domestic corporations, or only those engaged in intrastate commerce? All partnerships engaged in intrastate commerce, or only domestic ones?

It is difficult to detect ambiguity caused by your own misplaced modifiers because you know what you want to say and read your own sentences “with the inflection and emphasis that bring out the meaning you intend.”26 That is why you must revise your text from a reader’s perspective.27 The outsider’s viewpoint takes time (and experience) to acquire, so build some three-day rests into your editing process whenever you can.

Sometimes efforts to rearrange a poorly constructed sentence will be futile; the revision is no better than the original. The likely reason is that you clung too closely to the original, changing only words here and there, when the defect lay in its basic structure. Ask yourself whether you are violating one or more of the guidelines laid down in this book. Does the sentence follow normal sentence order? Does it attempt simultaneously to make two or three statements that would be better made in two or three sentences instead of one? Are modifiers next to the words they modify? To craft a properly organized sentence, consider starting from scratch.

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