When I was I law school they taught us to write as clearly as possible and avoid legalese. Hopefully that catches on, I don't think legalese is good or necessary. Clarity is better
There’s a famous story of Warren Buffet buying Nebraska Furnitur Mart with no paperwork whatsoever, just some verbal assurances, a handshake, and a TV interview with the esteemed owner.
IETF defines may, must, shall, etc. in every document but doesn't use the same format as law.
1) I remember being in a Requirements Review meeting and spending an entire hour debating the meaning of a word. Don't remember the word, but it was something like "includes".
2) I separately remember being in a Requirements review for a feature that concluded successfully. Then later in a Design Review for that feature. And after that, Code and Unit Test reviews of the same feature. Then, months later, the feature was presented to the person who asked for it in the first place and then said, "that's not what I wanted. I wanted xxx instead."
Yes, this person was at the Requirements and Design reviews!
To do it, lawyers would have to learn some category theory, but I think many of them would enjoy it.
Many probably discovered it already, without realizing it has a name.
Here's an example. Patent lawyers absolutely love the word "plurality", a very uncommon word in normal English. They mean "more than one", but why don't they say that? It's not only clearer but it's also less ambiguous (check the many definitions of "plurality").
It's because they are copying a rule without thinking about it. Other examples of that:
* "an historical occasion" - this is wrong, it's "a historical occasion", but people hear it and think it's some special rule
* Not using "I" in research papers, even with a single author! There's no rule that requires this but people think there is. I read a paper once that used "I". It was great.
For that matter, the first day I was in Great Britain, I noticed that the other Americans I met had British accents, and I noticed in the few hours talking with them, I was already picking up on the accent myself.
It's only natural to pick up the language and idioms of the cultures you happen to be immersed in!
(And this applies to Law and Engineering as much as anything else, too.)
I would say maths has its own issues with language accessibility, but they're a bit different from law. Probably the biggest problem is naming everything after people instead of coming up with meaningful names.
But, in any case, for those who pronounce the h, “a historical” is easier to say.
In the case of lawyers I’d suspect tradition first and fear of typos reversing meaning (“ahistorical”) second.
You're only doing it because you've heard other people do it and you think there's some special rule for it. Maybe subconsciously even.
And don't say "you can't say something is wrong in language because prescriptivism Vs descriptivism etc."
Yes generally it is the case that language is defined by how it is used. This is an exception, where something has a very very clear purpose and usage, and you're doing it wrong.
I actually can't think of any clearer cases where the prescriptivists are right. It would have to be something so obvious you don't even think about it, like using spaces between words. Yet for some reason everyone messes up "a historical". It's as bizarre as if everyone omitted spaces before "historical" but not "history" or any other words.
The grammar police have yet to pull me over. I'll continue speaking as I do, thank you.
There is nothing wrong with the use of ‘an’ before ‘history’ and the forms of that lemma. It is unusual, and perhaps pretentious or otherwise silly, but only in the same way as ‘connexion’ is an unusual (&c) but perfectly correct spelling.
The point of saying "an" instead of "a" is to make it easier to say a following word that starts with a soft sound (there's probably a technical term).
"A igloo" is hard to say, so we change it to "An igloo" which is a lot easier.
"A history lesson" is not hard to say so there's no need for "an".
Have you ever said "an history lesson" or even heard anyone say that?
No. Of course not.
Not arguing correctness, just intuition.
Yes, often.
Hackers (in the HN sense) also excel with programming language nuances.
They certainly did.
coliveira is saying a change in legal language opens up a contract to a reasonably different interpretation in the future. And we know it's reasonable (even likely) because there are myriad historical precedents where such ambiguities were used in the past to win cases against, say, GrantMoyer's Optimized Non-Standard Legal Language Law Offices. By using standard language that specific class of ambiguity issues goes away.
On the other hand, any good faith definition of "superstitious" is a pejorative that holds the belief to be irrational. So when GrantMoyer's Optimized Non-Standard Legal Language Law Offices uses its patent-pending optimized, non-standard language in their contracts, they are throwing out all the superstitious terminology on the basis that nothing bad will actually happen as a result of doing this. (At least, aside from things like random chance or any of the other true reasons that just happen coincide with superstitious falsehoods.) That's a bad idea-- it isn't supported by historical precedent, and it is likelihood to cause predictably bad outcomes in the future.
The only mitigating factor is this weasel sentence:
"Except sometimes the superstitions are right."
But to be generous we must take that to mean only the truism that superstition sometimes coincides with things like random chance. (Otherwise it'd be like saying no one goes to a particular restaurant anymore because it's so crowded, which is funny but incoherent.)
Edit: clarifications. Also, in closing, Your Honor, I call for one of those "bad court thingies." :)
Sure, some "superstitions" are the result of random folklore, and can be ignored without consequence. (Knock on wood!) But others are the result of meme-ized facts, passed on via something that's folklorish and easy to remember to share.
Thus, it is fair to use the word "superstition" to describe something you think might be harmless, but may actually have serious consequences, if ignored, after all.
It's irrational to think the awkward phrasing is actually better, but when you're being judged by other people sometimes they're going to enforce the bias.
Everybody learns partially through pattern recognition, partially from trial and error, partially from armchair reasoning. And functions mostly by repeating what they already know.
But it's emotionally satisfying to put all the negative parts onto others (cargo cult sheeple reciting magic spells), and save all the positive identifiers for yourself (brave scientist uncovering truths about the universe)