Entries in Usage (2)
Scholar Champions Clearer Legal Writing
Legalese is ubiquitous. It’s the fine print on the back of credit card statements, the license agreements for software, the warranties (and warnings and disclaimers) for new products. It often requires a magnifying glass and is considered to be convoluted, impenetrable, jargon-laden writing that is reviled by hapless readers.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, says Joseph Kimble, a Thomas Cooley Law School professor and editor-in-chief of The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, as well as the author of Lifting the Fog of Legalese: Essays on Plain Language (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2006). Kimble spoke to the Eye about his advocacy of plain language writing.
Roy Jacobsen
in Business writing, Usage, Law, Plain Language
|
2 Comments
Hopefully, Wistful No More
As an introductory sentence modifier, hopefully is accepted by some as perfectly legitimate and vilified by others, such as Edward Johnson in the Handbook of Good English, as “sloppy vagueness.” I am talking about the use of hopefully to mean “it is to be hoped that,” as in this sentence: “Hopefully, you aren’t gnashing your teeth because of this sentence.”