Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Bryan Garner, editor of Black’s Law Dictionary, head of LawProse Inc., and plain English expert, uses the following
passage in “The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing,” (1992), to show efforts to simplify legal writing existed as
far back as 1837 when the author satirizes how a lawyer would write, “have an orange”:
“Timothy Walker (1802-1856). An Ohio lawyer and the author of Introduction to American Law (1837), Walker
was one of the founders of the University of Cincinnati Law School. He frequently campaigned against legaldegook and, in 1848,
invented this famous example of how a lawyer might say, ‘Have an orange’:
‘I give you all and singular my estate and interest, right, title, and claim, and advantage of and in that orange,
with all its rind, skin, juice, pulp, and pips, and all right and advantage therein, with full power to bite, cut, suck, and
otherwise eat the same, or give the same away, as fully and effectually as I, said A B, am now entitled to bite, cut, suck,
or otherwise eat the same orange, or give the same away with or without its rind, juice, pulp, and pips, any thing heretofore,
or hereafter, or in any other deed or deeds, instrument or instruments, or what nature or kind so ever, to the contrary in
anywise notwithstanding.’”•
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.