Punctuation in Legal Texts

ThirdMan

What is it with Legal texts/judgements and punctuation?

"The First Report of the Company Review Group recommended the establishment of a Commercial Division within the High Court and the 27th Interim Report of the Committee on Court Practice and Procedure specifically recommended that a pilot project Commercial Court be established which would enable the speedy resolution of commercial disputes and facilitate the conduct of court business through the use of up to date technology"

coylemj

So go ahead and show us how you'd punctuate it......

The sentence consists of two principal clauses, the only place that can take a comma or any punctuation mark is between the words 'established' and 'which' on the second line where you could possibly put a comma, bearing in mind that you cannot a comma before a conjunction such as 'and' or 'but'.

Reloc8

Either :

"The First Report of the Company Review Group recommended the establishment of a Commercial Division within the High Court. The 27th Interim Report of the Committee on Court Practice and Procedure specifically recommended that a pilot project Commercial Court be established which would enable the speedy resolution of commercial disputes and facilitate the conduct of court business through the use of up to date technology"

or :

"The First Report of the Company Review Group recommended the establishment of a Commercial Division within the High Court, and/whilst the 27th Interim Report of the Committee on Court Practice and Procedure specifically recommended that a pilot project Commercial Court be established which would enable the speedy resolution of commercial disputes and facilitate the conduct of court business through the use of up to date technology"

Punctuation in bold

Not that I think the paragraph is particularly awful having regard to the norm but it could be improved upon. And yes the second one will offend technicalities of grammar, but the flow/sense is improved upon.

ThirdMan

coylemj wrote: »

So go ahead and show us how you'd punctuate it.......

Bad punctuation in law related material was one of the issues that came up in a tutorial recently. I thought I'd make a general observation on it. I should have anticipated the obligatory Boards.ie smart arse.

kaiser sauze

coylemj wrote: »

So go ahead and show us how you'd punctuate it......

The sentence consists of two principal clauses, the only place that can take a comma or any punctuation mark is between the words 'established' and 'which' on the second line where you could possibly put a comma, bearing in mind that you cannot a comma before a conjunction such as 'and' or 'but'.

Picking you up on this...

Do you mean this in the case of legalese or English grammar as a whole?

coylemj

English grammar as a whole, that's what we were taught when we did what was known as Parsing and Analysis, the technical side of grammar.

Jev/N

coylemj wrote: »

English grammar as a whole; that's what we were taught when we did what was known as Parsing and Analysis, the technical side of grammar.

I couldn't help myself!

edit: In addition, I would tend to disagree with your view on the acceptability of 'and' used in conjunction with a comma. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma However, I wouldn't be a fan of using it in my own writing.

kaiser sauze

coylemj wrote: »

English grammar as a whole, that's what we were taught when we did what was known as Parsing and Analysis, the technical side of grammar.

Then you are wrong.

Jev/N wrote: »

I couldn't help myself!

edit: In addition, I would tend to disagree with your view on the acceptability of 'and' used in conjunction with a comma. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma However, I wouldn't be a fan of using it in my own writing.

Thank you.

The use of "..., but..." is standard practice in everyday language and proper punctuation.

In relation to "and", I will give you a simple example:

"...to be left to Simon, Sue, Peggy and Jim, equally."

This is an excerpt from a hypothetical will where the crafter wished that their four children shared the estate equally. However, if you were to get technical and apply it as it is written here, the estate would be divided only three ways between Simon, Sue and the final share to Peggy and Jim together.

Now we will rewrite:

"...to be left to Simon, Sue, Peggy, and Jim, equally."

The simple action of inserting a comma makes a huge difference and means that they will each get one quarter share of the estate.

coylemj

Jev/N wrote: »

I couldn't help myself!

Touché

Jev/N wrote: »

In addition, I would tend to disagree with your view on the acceptability of 'and' used in conjunction with a comma. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma However, I wouldn't be a fan of using it in my own writing.

But that Wikipedia article backs me up, it says that it (comma before a conjunction) is used in American English which is irrelevant but then it goes on to say that Journalists, however, usually follow the AP Stylebook, which advises against it. It is less often used in British English.

Q.E.D.

coylemj

kaiser sauze wrote: »

In relation to "and", I will give you a simple example:

"...to be left to Simon, Sue, Peggy and Jim, equally."

This is an excerpt from a hypothetical will where the crafter wished that their four children shared the estate equally. However, if you were to get technical and apply it as it is written here, the estate would be divided only three ways between Simon, Sue and the final share to Peggy and Jim together.

Now we will rewrite:

"...to be left to Simon, Sue, Peggy, and Jim, equally."

The simple action of inserting a comma makes a huge difference and means that they will each get one quarter share of the estate.

I can't see how the inclusion of the comma in that sentence has such a dramatic effect on the bequest as you claim. In both cases it's pretty obvious that it has to be split four ways equally.

Orion

coylemj wrote: »

So go ahead and show us how you'd punctuate it......

You should not start a sentence with a subordinate conjunction so 'So' should not be the first word of your post. Multiple periods should not be used except in the case of an ellipse which would not apply in this case.

coylemj wrote: »

The sentence consists of two principal clauses, the only place that can take a comma or any punctuation mark is between the words 'established' and 'which' on the second line where you could possibly put a comma, bearing in mind that you cannot a comma before a conjunction such as 'and' or 'but'.

The first sentence should be completed. A comma does not split two clauses. You should have split the separate sentences in the second part with a semi-colon. A period would have done too but a semi-colon would be acceptable as they are related clauses. You also repeated yourself in the first half of the sentence.
(you also left out the word 'put' - that's a typo not a grammatical error)

The sentence consists of two principal clauses. The only place where you could possibly put a comma or any punctuation mark is between the words 'established' and 'which' on the second line; bearing in mind that you cannot put a comma before a conjunction such as 'and' or 'but'.

The sentence in the OP is actually grammatically correct despite it being typically unreadable for a legal clause.

kaiser sauze

coylemj wrote: »

I can't see how the inclusion of the comma in that sentence has such a dramatic effect on the bequest as you claim. In both cases it's pretty obvious that it has to be split four ways equally.

OK, you can't see the difference, but that is not what we are discussing here. I agree with you, that this will is clearly intended to leave the estate equally between all four children, however, if you apply the will as it is first punctuated, the result is as I describe.

I am willing to bet that many wills are made with this basic grammatical error, and they are overlooked/ignored as the intention can be realistically ascertained.

littlemac1980

Punctuation is like religion. People will always disagree about the basics, even though they all believe it's necessary.

Oh, and atheism is a religion by the way, but that's just my view.

Gazzetta

"The First Report of the Company Review Group recommended the establishment of a Commercial Division within the High Court. And the 27th Interim Report of the Committee on Court Practice and Procedure specifically recommended that a pilot project Commercial Court be established, [to] enable the speedy resolution of commercial disputes and facilitate the conduct of court business through the use of up to date technology"

Some people will hate it though.