3.2 Writing clear sentences

Clear writing starts with constructing clear sentences. A sentence is a basic unit of language that expresses a complete or self-contained thought. A clear sentence is one whose meaning is readily understood by its audience. This section briefly explains what a sentence is, before going on to provide some advice on how to write a clear sentence.

3.2.1 Constructing a sentence

To construct a good sentence, you need to know what sentences do and how they are built. In English there are four basic types of sentences: declarative, imperative, interrogative and exclamative.

In this chapter we focus on declarative sentences, which do most of the work in legal writing. The key grammatical point to note here is that a declarative sentence consists of a subject and a predicate. In every declarative sentence, something is said to perform some action or to have some feature or attribute. The subject of the sentence is the thing that performs that action or has that feature. The predicate of the sentence is the action or feature that is attributed to the subject.

In the sentence ‘The barrister smirked at the judge’, the subject is the barrister, and the predicate tells us what the barrister did, namely that they smirked at the judge.

In the sentence ‘The barrister is a rude buffoon’, the barrister is again the subject, but the predicate now tells us what the barrister is or what feature they have, rather than what they did.

In the sentence ‘The judge was smirked at by the barrister’, the judge is the subject (even though the judge does not perform the action of smirking) and the predicate tells us that the judge has the feature of having been smirked at. It is also written in the passive voice, which is generally better to avoid in legal writing. See 3.2.1(d) for more about the active versus passive voices.

This brief grammar lesson leads us to the first piece of practical advice about writing clear sentences.

(a)   Make your subject and predicate clear

A clearly written declarative sentence will enable the reader to know straight away what the subject of the sentence is and what is said about that subject. A good way to help you make these things clear is to formulate your sentence as an answer to two questions:

1. What or who is the subject of your sentence?
2. What is the key action or feature of that subject that you want to convey?

If your answers are ‘the barrister’ and ‘he smirked at the judge’, you could write your sentence as ‘The barrister smirked at the judge’. If your answers are ‘the judge’ and ‘she was annoyed’, you could write your sentence as ‘The judge was annoyed’.

In this way, you can build your sentence from the basic building blocks of subject and predicate. Keep your main focus on the nouns, verbs and adjectives you will need to identify the subject and predicate.

Once you have made that core information clear, you may sometimes want to add further information to the sentence. For example, you might want to also tell the reader that the barrister had arrived late to court. So you might add:

The barrister, who had arrived late to court, smirked at the judge.

Or you might want to add that the judge had already chastised the barrister and add some explanatory information:

The judge had already chastised the barrister for his lateness and so was annoyed by his further rudeness.

You might then want to put all of this information into one sentence:

The barrister, who had arrived late to court and had already been chastised by the judge for his tardiness, smirked at her, so she was annoyed by his further rudeness.

However, as you can see, the longer and more complex your sentence becomes, the harder it is for your reader to follow. Be careful not to overload your sentence with extra words and clauses. This brings us to the next piece of practical advice.

(b)   Express just one main idea in each sentence

Your sentence will usually be much clearer if it expresses one main idea. This will often be a matter of the sentence having just one main subject and one main predicate. When you have made these clear, stop and think whether your sentence will be improved by adding more ideas to it. Very often, it will not. So, add more information to your sentence only if the new information is integral to the main idea. If you have another, distinct idea to convey, then put it in a new sentence. Avoid piling up multiple ideas in one sentence and then leaving it to your reader to sort out what you are trying to say.

(c)   Use short sentences

Short sentences are usually much clearer than long ones. Keep your sentences short if you can do so without compromising the meaning of what you want to say. To help you write short sentences, be direct. Have a point and get to it. Add extra information only when necessary. This practice is closely connected to the value of expressing one main idea per sentence. If you express just one main idea in each sentence, then it will be easier to keep your sentences short.

Avoid trying to appear smart or more ‘lawyerly’ by using roundabout, longwinded ways of getting to your point. Unfortunately, there are many real-world examples of legal writing that use long and complex sentences. Law students do need to be able to read such writing, but this is not what is expected or desired of students in their own writing. Resist the temptation to mimic this verbose style.

(d)   Consider whether the active voice is better than the passive voice

Writing in the active voice is often clearer than writing in the passive voice. In the active voice, the subject of the sentence is the agent or performer of the main action.

In the sentence ‘The barrister smirked at the judge’, the barrister is the subject, smirking is the action and it is the barrister who is doing the smirking. This is the active voice.

In contrast, in the passive voice, the subject of the sentence is the recipient of the action, or the person or thing affected by the action.

In the sentence ‘The judge was smirked at by the barrister’, the judge is the subject of the sentence and is the one who ‘receives’ the action of smirking. This is the passive voice.

The active voice is often (but not always) better to use than the passive voice. For example, ‘The junior solicitor lost the summons’ is clearer and more direct than ‘The summons was lost by the junior solicitor’ or, even more vaguely, ‘The summons was lost’. A feature of the passive voice that can create problems is that the agent of the action is not always stated (as in the last example here), so the reader gets only half of the picture.

Sometimes your purpose may be best served by using the passive voice because it might be appropriate to focus the sentence on the thing that is affected by the action.

For example, in the sentence ‘The junior solicitor was sacked’ the subject is ‘the junior solicitor’ and they were on the receiving end of the action of sacking, but we are not told who did the sacking. But that may be what writer wanted, in order to focus on the junior solicitor and leave it to the context to identify the agent (e.g. ‘the senior partner’), who is not central to the story the writer wants to tell. For this reason, the passive voice is sometimes used by speakers or writers who want to avoid identifying the agent of the action, or where the agent is unknown.

(e)   Make sure each sentence is grammatically correct and properly punctuated

Always reviews each sentence to, makes sure that it are grammatical correct and properly; punctuated. (Yes, that sentence contains examples of what not to do.)

Grammar is not a matter of linguistic snobbery or pedantry. It is a matter of the basic rules that enable words to be used together in ways that make sense. Having a good grasp of how to write a grammatical sentence is an essential foundation for clear writing. Of course, some rules of grammar are more fundamental than others, some rules change over time, and there are some purported rules (such as the rule against splitting infinitives or ending a sentence with a preposition) whose value can be disputed. But there are some basic agreed points of grammar that it helps to know if you are to improve your writing.

The punctuation of your sentence should work hand in hand with its grammatical structure. Punctuation helps to show the internal structure of the sentence. Incorrect placement of punctuation marks can make a sentence very hard to read. Learn what the different punctuation marks are for and how to use them.

Common problem areas in punctuation include semicolons and apostrophes. Semicolons (;) are not colons (:). Colons introduce what is to follow. Semicolons have two main functions: they can be used to join independent clauses (i.e. sentences) to form one sentence; they can also be used to separate longer items in a list, especially one that has been introduced by a colon. Apostrophes indicate ownership (e.g. the writer’s pen, the writers’ pens) or the missing letters in a contraction (e.g. the contraction it’s expands to it is and the contraction can’t expands to cannot). Apostrophes have nothing to do with plurals (e.g. one ATM and two ATMs, not two ATM’s).

3.2.2  Choosing words to make your meaning clear

Sentences are made up of words. The words you choose will profoundly affect the clarity of your sentence. Even if your sentence is short, contains one main idea and is perfectly grammatically correct, a poor choice of words can render it incomprehensible.

(a)   When simpler, shorter words and phrases will do the job, use them

With respect to the issue of the optimum verbal form for effective communication, it is submitted that an overly extensive and conspicuously polysyllabic vocabulary whose contribution to the attempted communicative act would appear to be principally an increase in the likelihood of obscurantism is best decommissioned and substituted with terminology of a less complicated nature in those contexts where there is practicability attending upon such a strategy.

Or:

Long and complex words and phrases that obscure your meaning should be replaced with simpler and shorter words and phrases where possible.

As noted above, legal writing unfortunately contains many examples of needlessly complex and obscure vocabulary. Some students mistakenly believe they must emulate this style if they are to ‘sound like a lawyer’. What often makes this worse is that students who do this often do a poor job of it, so that what emerges is clumsy and unclear. It is much safer, especially for the beginning legal writer, to choose simpler, shorter words and phrases when they will do the job just as well. It is best to avoid decorating your writing with supposedly lawyerly words and phrases such as ‘hereunto’, ‘in the event that’ or ‘inter alia’.

Sometimes it is necessary to use certain technical words and phrases, such as ‘prima facie evidence’, ‘involuntary manslaughter’, ‘autrefois acquit’ or ‘testamentary trust’, which you should not replace with more familiar English words. In fact, when referring to cases or legislation, it is important to use the same language. But, apart from such instances, it is usually best to use simple and familiar words and phrases, particularly if your task is to explain complex legal concepts to a client who may not be familiar with technical language. As you learn more about the law, you will learn to recognise when a technical legal term needs to be used and when it does not. You can also use a legal dictionary to help you identify technical terms to make sure you are using them in the correct context.

(b)   Cut unnecessary words

If a word is unnecessary, redundant or superfluous, it will probably extraneously get in the way of the essential and important words that are actually necessary. Delete such unnecessary words from your sentence.

(c)   Use words consistently

Clarity needs consistency. The clear expression of fundamental principles requires consistent language. Also, some technical words need to be used consistently. While having a wide vocabulary can be useful, it will often be more helpful to your argument (and your reader) to be consistent where you are referring to the same thing. Writing with style does not always mean having to think up different ways of saying the same thing.

(d)   Use appropriate words of qualification

A common writing problem is the failure to properly qualify claims that are being made. For example, consider the sentence ‘Lawyers are greedy’. This sentence is telling us, or at least implying, that all lawyers are greedy, but can this be true? Or is it more accurate to say that only some lawyers are greedy? Most? Many? By failing to qualify the claim, the sentence is unclear, even though grammatically it is very simple.

Another example: ‘Greed causes ulcers’. Can we tell from this whether greed always causes ulcers or just sometimes causes ulcers? Is it saying that greed is the only cause of ulcers or just a cause?

Often the broader context will provide the missing information, but you should always check the context to see whether it really does provide the necessary clarification. If you are leaving too much to context and requiring your reader to do most of the work in sorting out your sentence’s meaning, then you will probably need to make the qualification explicit. Try to avoid being verbose when you do so, but very often the right extra word of qualification saves your reader from having to work it out for themselves.

(e)   Use the first-person pronoun when it is appropriate

Should you ever use the first-person pronoun (i.e. ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘mine’) in legal writing? It all depends on what you are writing. Recall the importance of knowing your role, audience and purpose.

When you are writing as a lawyer, you are not writing as yourself. You are playing a professional role in which you will, ideally, write what any competent lawyer would write. So, your identity should be in the background. However, this need not always mean that the first-person singular pronoun must be banished. Read judges’ reasons for their decisions and you will often see them writing ‘I have’ or ‘in my view’. Still, when writing as a lawyer, it is generally best to keep the focus away from you and use ‘I’ and ‘my’ sparingly.

In contrast, if you are writing a standard academic essay, you usually are writing as yourself and presenting your ideas and arguments with the purpose of informing or persuading your audience. It is true that you are, in a sense, playing the role of ‘an academic writer’, but even in that role you are still presenting your views and arguments. In this context, most law teachers view it as acceptable (and usually clearest) for you to use the first person singular (‘I’, ‘my’ etc.). (If you are in any doubt about what your teacher prefers, ask them.)

Using the first-person pronoun need not make your essay subjective. A subjective essay is one that merely expresses the writer’s opinions and preferences, without substantiating their claims with supporting evidence or reasoned arguments. An academic essay aims to be objective in the sense that it seeks to persuade its audience by appealing to some common ground in the form of evidence and argument. It does not seek to persuade merely by the sincerity or passion with which it maintains its position. The presence of ‘I’, ‘my’ and so on does not prevent you from substantiating your claims, and the absence of ‘I’ or ‘my’ does not itself supply any substantiating evidence or argument. That is, merely avoiding the word ‘I’ does not make your essay objective and merely using the word ‘I’ does not make your essay subjective. Nonetheless, in making your case, stick more closely to ‘I argue’, ‘I suggest’, ‘my definition’ and so on than to ‘I wish’, ‘I hate’ or ‘my feeling’. Your goal is still to persuade your audience, not just to express your feelings or to display your personality.