Building Rapport

Craig Ball, a member of the Law Technology News editorial advisory board, is a litigator and computer forensics/EDD special master. He provides a detailed explanation of metadata, a word of new importance for its use as legal evidence, at law.com.

Here is the gist:

There are two principal strains of metadata: application and system, both invisible to a reader of the document.

Application metadata is information typically absent from the printed page and embedded in the file it describes, moving with the file when you copy it.

By contrast, system metadata isn’t embedded in the file it describes, but stored externally and used by the computer’s file system to track file locations and store demographics.

Here are some reports on new developments in plain language use in government, courtesy of the members of the PLAIN listserve.

1. From Gary B. Larson: Governor Gregoire’s Plain-Talk Order

Washington’s governor is ordering all state agencies to adopt and follow the principles and practices of “plain talk.”

2. From Mike Durant: Stem cell plain language in California

Under Proposition 71, California taxpayers will reap profits from their unprecedented, $3 billion investment in stem cell research during the next 10 years. A panel of stem cell industry leaders has endorsed a policy requiring that research that is produced must also be written up in plain Engish for the general public.

3. From Mike Durant: Veteran’s Administration aims to make acquistion rules more user-friendly

The Veteran’s Adminstration plans a plain language rewrite of some regulations. The majority of the changes are geared toward making the rules simpler, in keeping with a series of plain language principles adopted in 1998.

University of Western Ontario psychologist Albert Katz tells Ann McIlroy of Canada’s Globe and Mail that women avoid metaphors with strangers.

… Dr. Katz is interested in non-literal language, such as sarcasm, irony or metaphors, because the brain has to process that someone is saying something that they don’t mean. His work, funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, sheds light on the subtle differences in the way men and women use and interpret language.

Men sprinkle metaphors — “this car is a lemon,” “this marriage is on the rocks” — more liberally in their conversations than women do, says Dr. Katz.

He recently completed a study on metaphor use with his graduate student at Western, Karen Hussey. They studied the on-line conversations of student volunteers.

Their theory is that men are more likely to take the risk of being misunderstood than are women. Women, it turns out, use more metaphors when they are among friends than when they are talking to strangers. This suggests that when they are comfortable, among people they trust, women take the risk of saying something that may be misconstrued. Men use metaphors with both strangers and friends…

Their theory is that men are more likely to take the risk of being misunderstood than are women. Women, it turns out, use more metaphors when they are among friends than when they are talking to strangers. This suggests that when they are comfortable, among people they trust, women take the risk of saying something that may be misconstrued. Men use metaphors with both strangers and friends.

Lots of cross links below to make a simple point: boring, tedious, pompous writing is losing adherents…

Ann Althouse writes well on the subject of writing, using the contrast between blogs and law reviews to make her point and encourage improvement in the law reviews.

“Blogging sharpens our taste in writing. It makes us impatient with circumlocution and pretentiousness. It makes us expect to see pithy ideas in every sentence.”

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2006/01/blogging-as-alternative-to-law-reviews.html

She develops further the point made by Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy: “Blogging pushes you to write clearly and simply; the format rewards clarity of expression more than traditional law review articles do.”

Kerr is responding to Solove who asks, at Concurring Opinions: Does Scholarly Writing Have to Be Tedious?

Today is Benjamin Franklin’s birthday. In 1789, Franklin denounced the verb usages of “to advocate,” “to progress,” and “to oppose” as barbarisms.

Yet today no one would argue with them. More evidence that the language evolves.

I personally find the new verbs made from nouns to be irritating. But I am not the test. Does the average reader of a particular text find these understandable and acceptable? Then I have to go with the flow.

Looking back here, I noticed I misspelled a word. And then I decided that I am not going to correct it. I will try to avoid typos and spelling errors, but I will not look back. Spelling was free form until all those dictionary people and English teachers decided to bring it under control a couple of centuries back. I like looking at the old writing and seeing how many variations existed for the same word and yet one could figure out the word meaning intended.

In plain language work, we want to avoid making our readers work unnecessarily so spelling is important. But rigidity on things like grammar doesn’t always improve understanding.

Timothy Perrin, who wrote Better Writing for Lawyers said he had “one unbreakable rule”:

“Occasionally, a good writer breaks rules for an effect. That’s fine provided she knows what she is doing… So that is my only unbreakable rule. You can break any rule I tell you if *you know the rule*, you know you are breaking it and *you can give a good reason why.”

The Council of Canadian Administrative Tribunals has issued this guide for the tribunal sector of the justice system under the title Literacy and Access to Administrative Justice in Canada which is available as a pdf file (100 pages).

This is a very positive development and we can now look forward to its application in tribunal work.

William DuBay has released his latest newsletter. Bill’s news is always reliable and interesting.

I have complained elsewhere that language is a tool not an artifact.

But now that I have this blog, I have another place to go on about it.

This week these two words came up as “words of the day” via dictionary.com:
exegete: one who explains or interprets difficult parts of written works.
recondite: difficult to understand.

The providers of such “words of the day” could do us a great service by offering more common words and their meanings. So many people misuse words that it infuriates me. (Small confession: I may have only developed this sensitivity after spending almost two years writing a plain language legal dictionary).

Nonetheless, these two words, in particular, annoy me. If it weren’t for the recondite writing of some there would be no work for the exegetes like me.