The Grammatical Lawyer

GRAMMAR MATTERS!

• Grammar matters, period!

•Lynne Truss wrote a book on grammar in 2003. It soon sold 3 million copies. The clever title of the book tells us why grammar matters: Eats, shoots and leaves. If the comma were missing, the meaning would be entirely different.

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Costly grammatical error – $2 million plus

•A grammatical blunder may force Rogers Communications Inc. to pay an extra $2.13 million to use utility poles in the Maritimes after the placement of a comma in a contract permitted the deal's cancellation.

•Page 7 of the contract states: The agreement "shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party."

•The validity of the contract and the millions of dollars at stake all came down to one point — the second comma in the sentence.

•The Regulator ruled that "Based on the rules of punctuation," the comma in question "allows for the termination of the [contract] at any time, without cause, upon one-year's written notice“.

•Had it not been there, the right to cancel wouldn't have applied to the first five years of the contract. The company said it never would have signed a contract to use roughly 91,000 utility poles that could be cancelled on such short notice. Its lawyers tried in vain to argue the intent of the deal trumped the significance of a comma. "This is clearly not what the parties intended," Rogers said in a letter to the CRTC. [Grant Robertson, “Comma Quirk Irks Rogers”, Globe and Mail, June 8, 2006]

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Entering a legal dispute with poor grammar and expression can be, in Sean Connery’s words, like taking a knife to a

gun fight.

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•Using good grammar is part of Plain English. Plain English is clear English. Clear English means using straightforward expression, using language that is lucid and not obscure, using sentence construction that is not convoluted. Good grammar is part of clarity. The purpose of grammar is to assist clarity of meaning.

•True, some grammatical rules go too far. We do not need to identify that a “distributive pronoun” is the “accusative case”. Some grammar rules are too fussy. We are not interested in these rules that are themselves difficult to comprehend and follow. We are concerned here with those basic grammatical rules that affect meaning and assist clarity.

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Building blocks: noun, verb, sentence

•A noun is a person, a place, or a thing. Some examples: lawyer, trophy, university, wig, degree, and café.

•A verb shows action or a state of being. Some examples: discuss, run, demonstrate, exist, moot, and be.

•A sentence contains one complete thought or idea - though it can be a complex thought or idea. (Obscure sentences in legal writing are famously long. If your writing lacks clarity, usually long, bad sentences are the main culprits. Go for short, clear ones.)

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These items are called “parts of speech”

Says Lynch, Guide to Grammar and Style: “Old-fashioned grammars stated quite straightforwardly that there were eight parts of speech, including:

•Verbs, which show action or states of being: go, talk, eradicate, be, exist, and so on.

•Nouns, which can be people, places, or things: Napoleon, Pittsburgh, table, eagerness.

•Pronouns, which "stand in for" a noun: he, she, it, they, that.

•Adjectives, which modify a noun or pronoun: big, sleepy, stupid, dilatory.

•Adverbs, which modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs: easily, obviously, very.

•Prepositions, which indicate the relationship between various elements in a sentence: to, with, from.

•Conjunctions, which link (conjoin) parts of a sentence: and, but, or, because, if, although.

<http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/

index.html>

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•So, let’s look at some of the main rules and frequent errors in our grammar. What errors do we see

all the time? Which grammatical errors diminish our reputation as lawyers most if we commit them?

•Don’t embarrass yourself turning up with a butter knife to your gunfight.

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