Legislating to communicate : plain English guidelines explicated using the USA Patriot Act 2001

Full text for this resource is not available from the Research Repository.

Tanner, Edwin (2011) Legislating to communicate : plain English guidelines explicated using the USA Patriot Act 2001. Dictum : the Victoria Law School Journal, 1 (1). pp. 21-41. ISSN 1838-6857

Abstract

In Lifting the Fog of Legalese,1 Joseph Kimble offered a set of guidelines for writing in clearer language. He does not provide a method for the interpretation and grammatical analysis of those guidelines. This article provides that analysis. Examples are taken from the USA Patriot Act 2001 to explicate and validate them and to assess whether that Act is expressed clearly, simply, and precisely. It was found that that Act contained some long and syntactically complicated sentences which result from the unnecessary adherence to the single provision/single sentence structure. If adherence to this structure were abandoned, comprehension could be enhanced and the legislation made more accessible to lawyers and lay persons alike

Item type Article
URI https://vuir.vu.edu.au/id/eprint/6912
Subjects Historical > FOR Classification > 1801 Law
Keywords ResPubID24311, grammatical analysis, sentence structure
Download/View statistics View download statistics for this item

Search Google Scholar

Repository staff login