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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-14-2010 @ 5:26PM
Salty Cookie said...
The law is serious business :O.
Reply
6-14-2010 @ 6:57PM
Gukojon said...
Nope, it's "srsbsns"
6-14-2010 @ 8:09PM
sooper said...
"INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANDY ADDONS..."
'Andy' is serious business.
6-14-2010 @ 10:15PM
Hollow Leviathan said...
Is there a reason that this serious business, the law, is always in full caps? I've always suspected it was a deliberate move to reduce readability among the lay so that they would just agree to the terms and click through, but that seems mean-spirited.
6-14-2010 @ 10:38PM
Red Hawk said...
The all caps things probably stems from hand written contracts, where block capitals would have been uesd. If you look at any number of people's writing, their 'regular' writing style (ie normal capitalisation, and mostly lowercase lettering) will vary from neat and legible to barely more than chicken scrawl.
Block capitals tend to remove a reasonable portion of the invididuality of a person writing, because you tend to write block capitals in a similar way to other people, and it also removes the cursiveness (ie letter joining). Just look at how you have to fill out a income tax form, or insurance form, and compare it to writing a letter with a pen to someone.
The use of block capitals standardises the structure, and so would increase the readability, and reduce the chance of words being misread or misinterpreted.
The other thing would be to ensure there is particular emphasis on key parts of the contract that cannot otherwise come out with the written word when compared to the spoken word.
6-15-2010 @ 9:55AM
Tienelle said...
At least in the United States, a couple of well-defined handwriting systems (Spencerian script, and the Palmer method) were developed to avoid exactly this problem of varying legibility. They pretty much died out with the advent of typewriters, though.
6-15-2010 @ 10:32AM
logicalfundy said...
Actually, there are some cases where things are required by law to be in all caps - you may have noticed in many licenses, the section about the warranty is all caps, even if the rest of the license is not. That's because that section is required to be all caps by law.
Well, technically it does not have to be all caps, it just has to be "conspicuous." However, the same set of laws lists being in capital letters as being conspicuous, so in order to avoid controversy about the meaning of the word "conspicuous," most lawyers will use all caps because all caps is a specific example from the laws.
http://www.mslater.com/2009/2/19/why-are-warranty-disclaimers-in-all-caps