The post before this one—the one about a reference in an insurance policy to “insects, birds, rodents, or other animals” (here)—made me realize I have to restructure in one respect how A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting presents ambiguity.
I put the discussion of ejusdem generis in the section of chapter 13 (Selected Usages) dealing with including. And I don’t mention either of those topics in chapter 7 (Sources of Uncertain Meaning in Contract Language). So what I need to do in the sixth edition—when it comes out in 2029 or 2030—is add a short new chapter on both ejusdem generis and including, which both present a distinct kind of ambiguity. I have in mind using as the title of that chapter a label I just invented for that ambiguity—”ambiguity of the specific versus the general.” And I’ll refer to that chapter in chapter 7’s roundup of the different kinds of ambiguity.
There’s a good news and bad news aspect to this. On the one hand, I would have preferred to have put this topic in the right place. On the other hand, the relevant analysis is in plain sight in the fifth edition, so it’s not as if I’ve inflicted some grand defect on MSCD. And I can see a path to my accumulating enough new materials and revisions to make a sixth edition worthwhile.
