A new client surprised and disappointed me this morning with their awful agreement.
Full of legalese and unplain English, it includes the following:
10 ) DELAYS. The TRAINER shall give the COMPANY immediate telephonic notice of any event which might cause a delay in the timely performance of services….
This caused me to wonder whether a text/SMS message would count as ‘immediate telephonic notice’ and introduces some ambiguity to the statement. I suspect the writer meant ‘telephone’ (to actually speak with a human being).
So, the writer may have elected to write instead:
10 ) DELAYS. The TRAINER shall give the COMPANY immediate telephonic notice of any event which might cause a delay in the timely performance of services….
Telephonic notice means oral notice by means of telephonic communication and, for the avoidance of doubt, does not include any oral notice left on an answerphone, voicemail or other such type of service (voicemail), save where such oral notice left on a voicemail is confirmed by a subsequent oral telephonic communication to the recipient. Further, without prejudice to the foregoing, telephonic notice may not be given by texting, SMS or other written means of telephonic communication.
Or, they may have simply said:
10 ) DELAYS. The TRAINER is to telephone the COMPANY immediately if any event might cause a delay in the timely performance of services….
This is an extreme example of a common practice. Writers often turn their verbs into nouns. For example: ‘he made a decision’ when the verb ‘decided’ would be more plain.
The use of ’shall’ is another can of worms entirely which we’ll come back to.
BTW, the client is hiring us to train their staff to write in Plain English.
