Education
PART 1 – GENERAL PRINCIPLESUnit 1 – Drafting in Plain English (continued)In the last edition, we started to consider some general principles of legalwriting and drafting in plain English. The first general principle webegan to consider was to keep your sentences as short as possible. Thekey principle to remember here is that every sentence should containone, and only one, idea.We suggested that writing and drafting in plain English is not necessarilyeasier than what we called the ‘traditional’ method. However, it hasseveral advantages. One of them is that it allows you, as a lawyer, toclarify your own thoughts. For example, if you have a case where thefacts or law are complex, separating the complexity out into single ideas,one sentence at a time, is very helpful. It allows you to see the issuesmore clearly and identify those where you may need to think morecarefully about them.