The Effect of Lawyers

by Little Miss Attila on December 18, 2009

. . . upon the English language has not been 100% positive.

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

John December 18, 2009 at 9:39 pm

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the frequent capitalization of nouns in the US Constitution has something to do with this?

Reply

Darrell December 19, 2009 at 1:22 am

Word are tools and people that work with tools often modify them to simplify the task at hand. Lawyers capitalize nouns to let it be known that they have moved away from the dictionary and created terms specific to the case at hand. “Author,” “Publisher,” “Novel” now refer to specific people/businesses/works defined at first use. When dozens of parties are involved, it makes everything easier–even the reading.

I’d review all that Judge’s cases. And yes, that is why I capitalized it. We can argue important matters like what the definition of “is” is in that next sentence, but that lower case gives it away.

Reply

Darrell December 19, 2009 at 3:49 am

How about “words are” tools?

Never a good sign when a mistake occurs on the fifth letter of a comment. Although there’s that “might as well get it over with” thing to consider.

Reply

Joe December 19, 2009 at 6:05 am

I am not sure lawyers have effected the English language too much. They have written a bunch of goop in legal documents though, in some bastardized language that roughly follows English.

Reply

Little Miss Attila December 20, 2009 at 12:28 am

So, the law discusses the specific by means of the universal . . . ?

Reply

Cancel reply

Reply to John:

Previous post:

Next post: