Why is the contract so difficult to read, is it the conspiracy of the lawyer world?丨 Funny Nobel

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The contract is like a trick. You can clearly see every word written by the drafting, but the pile of sentences that are finally connected will still cause you to fall into the abyss of confusion.

Why is the contract clause document so difficult to read all the things stipulated in the law? This year's funny Nobel Prize of Literature was awarded to researchers who wanted to understand the contract, and they discovered the mystery.

The journal "Cognition" published this research is a good journal, so even if it is an expert, as long as it is not an expert in the legal field, it is probably annoying about contract documents (without ruling the possibility of legal experts, it may abandon its possibility. _ (: _) _

After analyzing the English corpus that contains 10 million words, the researchers found that the "problem" of legal contracts was: too much use clauses, too much use of passive language, inappropriate use of capital (this Chinese is not), and improper use of words (this one Many Chinese) Wait [1].

Use too much sentence, sentence is difficult to read

The complexity of a sentence can be measured with it. How many ingredients are embedded (Embedding) to measure, as if "I know you know I know" sentences, you can nested unlimited. easy.

In legal documents, there are many examples of writing long, long -term clauses, and even deliberately embarrassed readers.

If you use the Taobao platform's disputed dispute service according to the Taobao platform rules, it means that you recognize and are willing to fulfill the customer service or public judge (adjustment) of the Taobao platform as an independent third party based on the dispute facts it knows and based on the Taobao platform. Decisions made by the rules (including adjusting the transaction status of the relevant order, and determining that all or part of the controversial payment will be paid to one or both parties of the transaction)

The simplified version is: "If you use the regulatory service according to the rules, it means that you recognize and be willing to perform the adjustment decision", in fact, it is not difficult to understand. The difficulty of understanding the atomic sentence is exactly the accessories of that pile of attachment.

In the first five first lessons of the editor, one must be used in more short sentences, such as the above sentence, you can try to write:

According to the rules of this platform, if you use the disputed dispute service of this platform, it means that you recognize and be willing to fulfill the regulation decision made by the prescription. The adjustment prescription includes customer service or mass judge, which will be a independent third party. It will make a regulatory decision based on the dispute facts it knows, including the transaction status of the relevant orders, and the determination will be paid all or part of the dispute to the transaction party. Or both parties and so on.

The legal logic has to find a lawyer friend to discuss whether it is appropriate, but work hard in this direction, the contract should be able to read a lot _ (: з∠) _

Excessive passive speech, sentences are stiff

According to researchers, the passive sentences of "by" in English legal documents accounted for 14.1%, while the proportion in standard English was only 2.3%, which was almost 6 times.

The percentage of passive speech sentences in different articles. Green strips are legal documents. To the right is the paper, blogs, novels, magazines, newspapers, speeches, TV movies, websites and Washington Post

In the book "Sentence" of Stephen Pinke, a master of linguistics, a special section is specifically listed, and the use of passive voice will greatly deteriorate the article [2].

Passive language can be widespread in various languages. One of the most important reasons is that people naturally pay more attention to the objects of the subject's subject, so if you need to pay attention to someone who is doing something, you must use a passive speech state. Essence

But the tone cannot be used randomly. Without the reader's perspective, the chaos will make the reader's attention be pulled by sentences and confuse the reader.

For example, "Seeing the lady with a shopping bag? A clown is being beaten with a zucchini." Use the zucchini to hit a clown. "

Unfortunately, most of the passive statement in the legal documents is not used in order to achieve special writing purposes. To be precise, the people who write it have nothing to think about, but only to save things: "The author knows the end of the story, so he puts the result and puts the result. Describe it directly (something was done). "[2]

The good news is that there are not many "quilts" sentences in the Chinese contract. The bad news is that the author's absent -minded situation is also common, which is reflected in the abuse of "performed".

This word is easy to use, because it does not need to consider the position of the main and predicate guests, and choose different structures according to different mobile names. Different word groups can be used to use a "A" to generate one. sentence. Just like seasoning with stubbornness, you don't need to consider the characteristics of ingredients and seasonings, you don't need to consider the heat. Use a universal method to tick the sag.

But if you eat too much, you will be tired, and if you use more, you will lose the flavor. One party did not ask the other party's disclosure information "in accordance with this contract."

If the words are improper, the reader has become illiterate open

Legal documents are the hardest hit areas of rare words. After all, many words are born for the contract. They are fish that leaves water, and they can not live in the air full of common words for three seconds. In the literature, there are two types of improper uses. One is the use of words that rarely appear in daily life, and the other is a word that can be used more easily, but it must be used.

The former refers to some of the legal terms, such as "complete civil behavior", "relief pathway", "legal subject", etc., which are highly abstract and generalized words. "The synonymous word" transfer ", the first word looks a lot more professional than the second word.

Professional is the cornerstone of the lawyer industry, and the language is to defend its firm wall -no, not just lawyers, most industries need to use terms to maintain their costs of eating.

However, firm walls may fall a little. After unnecessary professionalism is erased, the law is still important, and lawyers are still important.

I hope that one day, "If the seller starts the receipt process through a lawyer, the buyer shall pay the lawyer's fee." Come to collect the payment. 2. Please pay the buyer to pay a lawyer fee "such a concise sentence!

references

[1] Martínez, E. E. E. Mollica, F., Gibson, E. (2022). Poor writing, not specified concepts, drives processing differenting. Cognition, 224, 105070.

[2] Stephen Pin Ke (2018).

Author: Su seven years

Edit: You Zhixuan

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