Yesterday I saw this tweet:
#30plainwords. 27. Instead of using therefore, chooseso. #IPLAINDAY. http://t.co/IzOAfqHk7c Join tweet-up #talkplain2015 Oct 13 9am PT
— Kate Whiteside (@keykate) October 9, 2015
Hardly a shocking proposition, but it brought to mind the one place in a contract that features therefore, the lead-in:
The parties therefore agree as follows:
So why not use so instead:
So the parties agree as follows:
I said as much on Twitter. That attracted the attention of notorious troll and denizen of the Darknet, @IPDraughts:
Neither word is needed.
And so to bed. https://t.co/mUJslmvnKm
— Mark Anderson (@IPDraughts) October 10, 2015
But the lead-in comes after recitals that state, in straightforward narrative prose, anything that the reader would benefit from knowing before leaping into the body of the contract. As such, a therefore or so simply greases the skids of narrative.
As regards the choice between therefore and so, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, I don’t use therefore much in my regular prose, so why cling to it for contracts? On the other hand, contract prose is limited and stylized, so there’s no point in pretending that it’s like everyday English. For example, I don’t use contractions in a contract (see this post). Is so too casual for contracts? That seems unlikely. I suspect that resistance to so, on anyone’s part, would be a function of resistance to change.
Mind you, change for the sake of change isn’t great either. It might be that the benefit of changing from therefore to so isn’t worth the disruption.
I’ll ponder, but I suspect that this is the sort of change that, once you think of it, acquires an air of inevitability. What do you think?
