The Wonders Of English

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The Plain English Campaign (website here) have just announced the recipients of its Golden Bull Awards for examples of mangled English . One “winner” was the Australian Taxations Office, for its Goods and Services legislation

*'For the purpose of making a declaration under this Subdivision, the Commissioner may:

a) treat a particular event that actually happened as not having happened; and
b) treat a particular event that did not actually happen as having happened and, if appropriate, treat the event as:

i) having happened at a particular time; and
ii) having involved particular action by a particular entity; and

c) treat a particular event that actually happened as:

i) having happened at a time different from the time it actually happened; or
ii) having involved particular action by a particular entity (whether or not the event actually involved any action by that entity).’ *

The other awards can been downloaded by the website. There are some wonderful examples , including a 630 word sentence.

2

Though the 630-word sentence is complicated, how else could they describe the path accurately without using a map? Remember, something like this has to be precise, so how would you improve it?

3

It does not have to be in one sentence. It could be broken down into a number of sentences, which would still do the same job.

4

To be fair, the 630 word sentence looks pretty much like every legal description I’ve ever had the misfortune of typing up. They’re not meant to be pleasing English, only technical descriptions of a property.

5

I don’t think it is a sentence; I didn’t see a verb in it.

6

… by using a map? Isn’t that why we have maps in the first place?