Occasionally I see someone invoke Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style in connection with drafting contracts. Two things come to mind, one specific, the other general. First, Strunk & White doesn’t have an unblemished reputation. Linguist Geoff Pullum did a number on it in this article, in which he says this: I believe the success of Elements to be … Read More
In this blog post I reminded myself and you all that A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting has a life independent from me: just as you don’t need me to read MSCD, you also don’t need me to teach MSCD. In that spirit, would you be interested in presenting my course Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass to a group from … Read More
It’s high time that I shift gears, in two respects. Positive Over Negative I’ve spent much of the past 20 years on the offense. I decided early on that if I wanted to make headway against entrenched notions of what clear contract language looks like, and if I wanted to keep myself and my readers interested, I shouldn’t pull my … Read More
Although it’s early in the game, I’m willing to believe that generative artificial intelligence, by whatever name (“large language models”, GPT-4, and so on), will have a significant effect on the world of work. But it’s not relevant to what I do, because for now, contracts are largely immune to a generative-AI takeover. For one thing, mainstream contract drafting is … Read More
[Updated 2:30 p.m. ET to incorporate Vance’s version (see his comment).] Below are five versions of a sentence, with the only difference being the order in which the components are arranged. I listed the first four in the order in which I preferred them at the time of posting, from most preferred to least. The fifth is the version proposed … Read More
Betteridge’s law of headlines says that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” Well, Betteridge’s law applies to this post. Raiford Palmer drew my attention to this tweet, which says as follows: Defined terms (“Definitions”) should be 1 word. 2 words MAX, in rare cases. If you’re out here dropping 3+ word … Read More
This week I launched a new training option, Drafting Clearer Contracts: Presentation. (Go here for the relevant page of my training site; go here for the related blog post.) So I figured it might be helpful for me to summarize what I hope participants will gain from my training, whether it’s in the form of Presentation or the other option, … Read More
On 27 and 28 June 2023 and on 12 and 13 September 2023, I’ll be doing my first-ever online public Drafting Clearer Contracts presentations. I’ve expanded my training site to reflect that—go here for more information. These presentations are more accessible than, and offer better value than, presentations I’ve done previously. Allow me to explain. Since 2006, I’ve done hundreds … Read More
Yesterday I saw this tweet by Kaitlyn Fydenkevez: I have spent a large portion of my day fighting over whether a particular contract should refer to itself as “this Form” or “this form”. @AdamsDrafting, what have you done? What we’re seeing here is what happens when you eat the fruit of the contract-drafting tree of knowledge—you look around with new … Read More
A reader pointed out this post by John Coyle on the Transnational Litigation Blog. It concerns litigation over this provision: This agreement is governed by the laws of Ireland. If we bring an action to enforce this agreement, we will bring it in the jurisdiction where you have your headquarters. If you bring an action to enforce this agreement, you … Read More
