The LexPublica Blog

When I first moved to Canada from the U.S. several years ago, it was as if I’d stepped into a sort of gentle Twilight Zone: speed-limit signs looked the same but were in kilometres not miles, temperatures were reported in degrees Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, television stations played the same shows but the commercials were less flashy. I adapted quickly, but some of the things I found most confusing were phrases I encountered related to the functioning of government. It took me a while to figure out that when someone in Canada tables a motion, they’re bringing it up for discussion; in the U.S., to table a motion means not to discuss it anymore. Before I figured that out, I found most coverage of Parliament to be downright confounding.

Perhaps this might indicate to some degree the tremendous endeavour LexPublica is undertaking in having a linguistically diverse community participate in the development of common legal contracts. Not only do we have to make it as easy as possible for participants not to feel confused as they collaborate across regional and dialect lines, we have to make it easy for such a community of diverse English speakers to write plain-language contracts that are consistent with all the other contracts we produce and that are easily understood by contract users regardless of their own dialect. And let’s not forget that we want our contracts to be easily translated into other languages.

To address this meaty problem, we’re working to lay the foundation of a style guide that will evolve as LexPublica evolves. In it we’ll specify all manner of conventions: rules of punctuation and grammar, legal-language usage, how to properly insert citations when referring to cases and legislation,  guidance on the structure and layout of contracts. We’re also building what we’re calling the lexicon—a database of terminology encompassing both plain language and formal legal terms. One of the most important functions of the lexicon will be to facilitate the use of consistent terminology across contracts—it will allow us to mark a term or phrase as preferred over any synonyms it may have. We’ll also be keeping track of spelling and usage preferences.

The style guide is itself a fairly massive project; eventually we hope a community of word nerds, grammar fiends, legal linguists, prescriptivists, descriptivists, and average folk will grow up around it just as communities will grow up around contract topics. If you think you’d be interested in helping out with the style guide, speak up and I’ll keep you posted as the project develops.