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Last updated 4 December 2009
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A request for help on the treatment of defined terms Added 4 December 2009
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Mark Stanton writes:
I am currently looking into best and current practice for the treatment of defined terms in legal texts. I am particularly interested in:
- why they've traditionally been highlighted in bold, italics or similar cases where this has worked well, or not
- use of initial caps to flag defined terms, and whether this is effective, or not
- whether any alternative treatments have been used successfully.
I am also interested in why defined terms are highlighted. I can think of four reasons:
- to introduce a short name
- to indicate that a term has a specific meaning in the text, which may be different to its generally understood meaning, eg valuables in an insurance contract might have a specific minimum value
- to flag that the reader should go and look the term up to make sure they understand the specifically defined meaning
- to indicate cases where the use of a term does not have the defined meaning (this situation could probably be avoided with careful drafting)
Do you agree with these reasons? are there others?
Many thanks for your help.
and/or/if
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Awards to Clarity members Added 4 December 2009
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Our congratulations to five Clarity members who have recently won awards for their work.
Bryan Garner (with his co-author Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia) won the 2009 Burton Law Book of the Year Award
for Making your Case: the art of persuading judges.
Professor Joseph Kimble (a past president of Clarity who won a Burton Award 2 years ago) hasn't yet been given his award but it has been announced. He is to receive the Association of American Law Schools 2010 award "to an individual who has made a significant lifetime contribution to the field of legal writing and research".
Emeritus Professor Peter Butt (another past president of Clarity), Christine Mowat (past chair of PLAIN), and Robert Eagleson (with Peter Butt, founding co-director of the Centre for Plain Legal Language) shared the 2009 PLAIN awards for their lifetime service to plain language.
(Robert is the one with the convex prize)
For brief biographies of the PLAIN winners, click the conference website and scroll down the page that appears (as there's no word-search).
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