Academic Legal Writing - Eugene Volokh [65]
... will have a positive effect.
They are written in fairly plain English, and aren't hard to understand—but they make their points through abstract terms such as “unavailable,” “violence,” and “positive effect,” and the circumlocution “law enforcement.”
When you want someone to protect you, whom do you want? Your visceral, real-life answer will be “the police,” not “law enforcement.” What do you want them to do? Your normal answer will be “come in time,” not “be available.” “When the police can't come in time” quickly engages the reader's practical concerns; “when law enforcement is unavailable” doesn't. (I assume that the “[come in time] to prevent a killing, rape, or robbery” is implicit from context; if it isn't, then some such phrase should be included.)
Likewise, instead of “Considering the amount of violence that is connected with guns,” try “Considering how many people are killed, injured, or threatened with guns.” Killings, injuries, and threats are what people really worry about; “violence” is just the abstract term for that. Readers will intellectually understand what “violence” means, but they won't be as engaged by it as they would be by “killed, injured, or threatened.”
Instead of “will have a positive effect,” describe the actual effect, for instance “will prevent many murders and suicides.” No one wants “positive effects” in the abstract; they want specific, concrete benefits, and if you explain the benefits, people will be more persuaded.
One more example:
The waiting period provides a vital time frame, which allows an individual the time to reconsider their actions and consequently, lives will be saved.
This sentence contains several writing glitches; “individual” is legalese for “person,” “a vital time frame” is vague, and “their” is plural while “individual” is singular. But the deeper problem is that the sentence is written using unnecessary abstractions. A better formulation would be:
The waiting period can prevent impulsive murders and suicides, by giving people time to calm down [optional: and reconsider their plans].
Instead of the general “time to reconsider their actions” and “lives will be saved,” this explains concretely which actions (impulsive murders and suicides) will be reconsidered and which lives will be saved. It provides more substantive details, describes a concrete scenario for the reader (an impulsive person needs to calm down, or else he'll commit murder or suicide), and thus makes the argument more persuasive.
There are two situations in which the concrete is not as good as the abstract. First, sometimes you need to use a term that's more abstract but more precise. For instance, “murder” is usually a better, more concrete term than “homicide,” but if you are talking about a study that measures all homicides (including manslaughter, justifiable homicide, and excusable homicide), you need to use the more accurate term.
Second, sometimes you intentionally want to soften the emotional force of a claim, either because you fear that the issue may be too viscerally engaging (part of the reason that some articles use “sexual assault” instead of “rape”), or because you're describing the other side's argument. This second reason is not entirely praiseworthy, but it may be tolerable; you have an obligation to describe the counterarguments honestly, thoroughly, and clearly, but you need not frame them in the most emotionally forceful way possible.
But these are exceptions. The rule is to talk about what actually matters to the reader (the police not coming in time) and not about abstractions (law enforcement being unavailable).
G. Passive Voice
Many people recommend that you turn the passive voice—“The action was done by this person” (the object was verbed by the subject) or just “The action was done”—into the active voice, “This person did this action” (the subject verbed the object).
This is generally good advice. Passive voice often makes writing less direct: “Passive voice should be avoided by you” is worse than “Avoid