09/17
2007
A legalese lesson in pluralization
“Unless the context otherwise indicates, words importing the singular number shall include the plural number and words importing the singular number shall include the singular number.”
I read this today while reviewing a contract at my 3-day a week Day Job. After which I poked out my eye with a knife. And of course, in this case the singular use of “eye” means both eyes and the singular use of “knife” means one knife.
Like other things, too much legalese will make you go blind.
I think I am looking forward to more things that fall into the, “why it’s amazing john grisham can write something that people will actually read” category…
BTW…I’m not entirely sure what they are saying…
Yeah, the AIAJGCWSTPWAR category seems like it should offer a bounty of writing fodder, but the more I think about it, the more I think this post could be the first and last post with that tag.
I don’t know what they are saying either. I think they write this way to keep their lawyer brethren in work: When a lawyer sends you crap like this, you don’t want to read it, so you send it to your lawyer, who in turn writes a crap mumbo jumbo response that only the other party’s lawyer can read…etc…etc…