Plain Language Translations of American Divorce Law
163In some cases, several basic level terms may have to be put together to
achieve the meaning needed, but in others the meaning may be implied
from context by reducing the number of words. Legal documents tend to
contain unnecessary repetition or other readability obstacles that increase
word count, and therefore plain language forms tend to be the same size
as, or significantly shorter than, traditional forms.
Sentence hierarchy
The ability to create a wide variety of hierarchical structures in sentences
is considered a primary characteristic of human language and evidence of
a higher level of linguistic development than in other animals. Of
particular note is the use of dependent clauses to refine meaning. A
dependent clause buried in a sentence increases length and requires more
thought as a reader tries to comprehend just what the dependent clause is
referring to, and how it affects the meaning of the sentence as a whole.
Humans can usually understand several levels of hierarchy before
becoming totally lost, but multiple levels of hierarchy are harder to
comprehend than fewer levels. Legal documents are notorious for
including a series of thoughts within a single sentence, especially if there
is a choice to be made. Sentences that include several elements are
visually dull and difficult to decipher. A common plain language
translation fix for such a problem is a bulleted list. If there is a logical
order to the list, then the elements might be numbered. If the list requires
the reader to make choices, then a very simple fix is to create a bulleted
list with check boxes instead of bullets.
Another source of potential problems is the conditional clause. This is
your “if–then” statement; if the state noted in the first part of the sentence
occurs, then the event noted in the second part of the sentence will occur.
Often, a legal event will occur when a set of requirements are met. The
description of the legal event and the predicate requirements are
complicated and usually very important; it is critical that such a
description be as clear and simple as possible. One method of
simplification in these cases is to create a checklist of elements with
appropriately placed checkboxes and a concluding sentence at the end
declaring that, if all the boxes are checked, the event will take place. The
checkboxes help reduce the reader’s work to two activities: (1) read the
simple concluding sentence and (2) check the appropriate boxes.
In several of the new forms created by the Pro Se Project, new
checkbox lists were added where previously litigants were expected to
write sentences into blank lines. The checkbox system not only improves