Plainer Legal Language-Untangling Complex Subordination and Restrictives in Acts

Abstract

A brief stylistic analysis of the language of acts shows that this core genre of legal prose is signifuantly different from other prose forms and requires special treatment to make it more readable to the general public. Two main areas of concern (subordinations and restrictive post-modifiers) are first related and then studied to derive guidelines for improving readability without sacrificing meaning. The guidelines include methods for separating parts of requirements, changing the order of the information imparted, and using more marked structures to signal the information pattern.