29

Oct

That’s One Problem Less. Or is it?

reflectionsEver spent a long morning wondering whether to use “fewer” or “less”?

The Economist wrote this on the subject this week:

“David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest featured the Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts, who boycott stores with signs reading “12 items or less”. A few vigilantes have defaced such signs in real life. What is the distinction, and why does it matter?”

As is common knowledge, nouns can be “countable nouns” or “uncountable nouns”.

Countable nouns are usually distinct things that can be counted, and take a plural: think “companies”, “law suits” or “bottles of water”.

Uncountable nouns cannot usually be counted or made plural: think “information”, “Furniture” or “water” *.

Under the traditional rule, “fewer” goes with countable nouns and “less” with uncountable nouns.

Hence “My colleague has fewer cases than I do”, but “My colleague has less work than I do”. The rule was first proposed in this form in 1770 by Robert Baker in Reflections on the English Language.

But Baker expressed this as a preference, not a rule, perhaps because there are certain grey areas (what’s new, you might ask).

In spoken English, particularly in informal surroundings, this rule is sometimes broken. “I’ve lived here less than three years” sounds and feels more natural than “I’ve lived here fewer than three years”. And “less” is almost always more natural than “fewer” after the word one, in sentences like “that’s one less thing to deal with”. Both of these examples go against the rule we have just uncovered, so, as usual in the pursuit of correct English usage, it is wise to be aware of the rule, to be aware of the exceptions to the rule and to be aware that English is a quixotic and multi-layered thing of beauty..

*They can very occasionally be counted, as in when a fancy restaurant decides to offer several different “waters”, but “water” in ordinary use is otherwise as uncountable  as equipment, news and coffee)

8 years ago Short URL Comments

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18

Oct

The Hyphen

hyphenThere are evil  forces at work trying to remove the hyphen from our writing, but some of us are putting up brave and solid resistance. Here is a brief clip from an article in the FT Innovative Lawyers series. Look at how the hyphens shine:

Its traditional aversion to risk has meant the legal profession has not been in the vanguard of new technology. But it is seen as ripe for disruption — a view that is based not least on pressure from tech-savvy corporate clients questioning the size of their legal bills and wanting to reduce risk.

As more law firms become familiar with terms such as machine learning and data mining, they are creating tech-focussed jobs like “head of research and development” or hiring coders or artificial intelligence (AI) experts.

Change is being driven not only by demand from clients but also by competition from accounting firms, which have begun to offer legal services and to use technology to do routine work. “Lawtech” start-ups, often set up by ex-lawyers and so-called because they use technology to streamline or automate routine aspects of legal work, are a threat too….

Hyphens are a godsend for giving depth and texture to the noun they accompany. A “so-called expert in the field” is not only an individual that other people are calling an expert, but one whose skills and knowledge in the area the writer might dispute. Thus “so-called” can carry a degree of irony that gives your writing a nice touch. It can, as here, simply mean “what people are calling something”, however.

The report mentions tech-focussed jobs, which saves him or her from writing an entire phrase or sub-clause to explain what kind of jobs we are describing, i.e. jobs that are predominantly focussed on technology.

So, in this way, a Lisbon-based law firm is a law firm that has its headquarters in Lisbon and a ten-strong corporate team is not only telling us how many people make up the Corporate department, but also that they’re very good professionals.

So, do not remain tight-lipped about the hyphen. Tell all like-minded people to use it and to enjoy it. It will help your written English avoid being long-winded and instead will give it a well-balanced and well-organised feel.

It will also, if used properly, avoid the risk of being totally misunderstood. For example, “father to be stabbed in bar” would appear to be a newspaper headline of weird and worrying prescience. How does the writer know that is going to happen? In fact, with the aid of hyphens, a different story emerges from the rubble: “father-to-be stabbed in bar”, means that the unfortunate victim was about to become a father.

Likewise, “twenty four-hour shifts at the factory” are different to “twenty-four hour shifts at the factory” and different again from “twenty-four-hour shifts at the factory”. Who is working the longest hours? I will leave you to decide!

 

 

 

 

 

 

8 years ago Short URL Comments

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12

Nov

The Battle to be Lucid

Consider the quality of the work you produce in English.

sleep

Derek nodded off during the afternoon session

Anyone, who would like to produce reasonably representative examples of the prose of business contracts, legal opinions or any other piece of appropriate legal communication might like to be aware of the following points:

  • Your writing needs to be clear, concise and connected. Examine the language you have already produced and simplify it. Shorten it. You will be able to remove between 15% and 20% comfortably, without damaging the text and without changing or clouding the meaning.
  • Examine your work for signs of phrases, passages of text and single words that are too closely translated from your own mother tongue. Remember, what your own language might sometimes say in 35 words, English may well say in 25 or 30. You can guarantee also that the shape of the sentence will almost certainly be different, occasionally radically so.
  • Examine the tone of the article. Does it match correspondence coming in the opposite direction? Does it contain unnecessary contractions? Is it conversational in tone and in shape? Does it sound hurried, disinterested, informal, impolite?
  • Does your work contain examples of pomposity or archaic phrases? Although legal English has every right to hold onto its weighty, serious tone, it also has every right – or a duty, in fact – to keep up with the modern world and the way that the modern world communicates.
  • Find legal writers, journalists and novelists, whose style you admire. Copy, adapt or steal phrases and words that you hear or read and think may add something positive to your own English.
  • Read more. By choosing your English language sources carefully, you will surround yourself with good language use. Soon this will become the norm for you and you will find your own language use improving.
  • Care about what you produce. One badly worded email will not bring the wheels of industry to a halt, but – as my Grandmother always said – if it is worth doing, it is worth doing well. As we all agree, grandmothers invariably know what they are talking about.
  • Set time limits for work in English. An email that would take you three minutes in your own language should not take you an hour in English. Think clearly. Prepare yourself properly. Make a plan. Check thoroughly. Use online resources like Google, Wikipedia, Dictionaries and a reliable thesaurus.
  • Legalese can be a like fog: impenetrably thick, with reduced vision. Modernise and simplify your language. Make it easy to read and easy to follow. Many disputes have their roots in over-complicated contract language for example.
  • Cut and paste. With care and precision, examples of good practice, texts that you are particularly proud of, emails that have had the desired effect, should be used time and time again, but with careful pruning and great vigilance for the changing of important details. In a world where time costs money, there is no need to reinvent the wheel every time you sit down to write an email.
  • Put some of these ideas into practice and see what effect they have.

 

10 years ago Short URL Comments

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