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Volume 12, Number 5 - May/June 2003
Legal Ease
By Howard Darmstadter
What's wrong with long sentences?
A few weeks ago, I began reading Garrett Mattingly's The Armada to my younger
son. A 1960 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Armada is a riveting account of the defeat
of the Spanish Armada, set against the background of the great-power diplomacy
of the period. I first read it in my 20s, and I've reread it several times since. My
older boy read it with tremendous enjoyment in his early teens. I have
occasionally wished that all of history could be so engagingly written.
But reading aloud is different from reading to one's self, and within a few pages I
found myself stumbling through great expanses of prose. Here's a sample,
describing the limitations Elizabeth Tudor had to contend with:
CALENDAR
She never had any standing army except a handful of ornamental guards, or any police
beyond what was furnished by her practically independent magistrates, and though in the
years of her greatest danger her secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, built up for her
protection what some historians have described with awe as "an omnipresent network of
spies," this impressive system of counterespionage in England dwindles on inspection to a
few underpaid agents of varying ability whose efforts were supplemented by casual
informers and correlated by a single clerk who also handled much of Walsingham's ordinary
correspondence, a system hardly larger or more efficient, except for the intelligence of its
direction and the zeal of its volunteer aids, than that which every first-rate ambassador was
expected to maintain for his own information, one which the governments of Florence or
Venice would have smiled at as inadequate for the police of a single city.
That's a single sentence, folks!
Is Mattingly overrated as a writer? Or is the advice we repeatedly hear to
keep our sentences short mistaken? Before we rush to answer these
questions, let's take a closer look at the Mattingly monster.
The first 24 words (through "magistrates") offer no barriers to comprehension
— it's a straightforward "She didn't have this and she didn't have that"
construction.
The remaining 127 words begin with "and though." The "and" tells you that
more limitations will be discussed, the "though" that there will be at least two
more statements, the second of which will undercut the first.
The first statement, immediately following the "and though," is that " in the
years of her greatest danger her secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, built up
for her protection what some historians have described with awe as an
omnipresent network of spies'." By qualifying historians with "some," and by
using the slightly overblown "awe" and "omnipresent," Mattingly reinforces
the "and though" to signal what's coming: The spy network will turn out to
be as inadequate as the army and the police.
This still leaves 95 words to negotiate before the oasis of a period, but at
least you have a good idea what's coming. And there's more help: Mattingly
begins the second statement with "this impressive system dwindles on
inspection ," followed immediately by "a system ,"which tells you that there
will be more information about this system, and concludes with "one [the
system] which the governments of Florence or Venice .," which adds a last
fact about the system. (The referent of the "one" might leave you confused
for a moment, but by then you are a mere 21 words from the finish.)
What makes this long journey possible, and even enjoyable, are the many
signposts Mattingly scatters along the way. But just because it's doable
doesn't mean it has to be done. Would Mattingly have been better advised to
break up the sentence? It would have been easy, for example, to place a
period between
"magistrates" and
"although," and
another after
"correspondence," with the next sentence starting with "It was a system ."
This would have replaced the example sentence with three sentences of 24,
70 and 58 words.
Prose style requires an appreciation of rhythm, and in particular the
counterpoint of long and short sentences. Many writers (and readers) enjoy
the interweaving of long sinuous sentences and short staccato bursts. For
example, Mattingly's super-sized sentence is the third in a five- sentence
paragraph. It is preceded by two substantial sentences of 64 and 30 words.
Then comes our example sentence, undulating its languorous way forward,
until it is stopped by the pop, pop of a two-sentence 26-word coda:
There was no way Elizabeth Tudor could govern the English by force. She ruled them by the
arts by which a clever woman rules a lover.
The rhythm is: Long, medium, super long, short, short.
Was Mattingly thinking of any of this as he wrote the paragraph? Good
writers don't follow recipes, for there are none: They feel the rhythms, and
the words flow. Mattingly no doubt foresaw the effect, and wrote the words
to achieve it, just as Barry Bonds might foresee the home run's arching
trajectory even as the ball leaves the pitcher's hand. Mattingly doesn't have
to understand the principles involved (which are little understood in any case)
any more than Bonds has to understand Newton's laws. The gap between
conception and result isn't bridged by textbook principles, but by talent.
What does all this have to do with legal writing? Well, experts on legal writing
constantly urge you to shorten your sentences. And it's good advice. Long
sentences can be confusing. But the reason they're confusing isn't because
they're long, but because writers often forget to mark crucial turnings, or to
take other steps to prevent the reader from wandering off the path. Consider:
Upon (i) any payment being required to be made by the obligor under the junior
indebtedness upon any declaration of acceleration of the principal amount thereof or (ii) any
payment or distribution of assets of the obligor of any kind or character, whether in cash,
property or securities, to creditors upon any dissolution or winding up or total or partial
liquidation or reorganization of the obligor, whether voluntary or involuntary or in
bankruptcy, insolvency, receivership or other proceedings, all principal, premium, if any, and
interest due or to become due upon all the superior indebtedness of the obligor shall first be
paid in full, or payment thereof provided for in money, before any payment is made under
junior indebtedness.
The sentence starts off promisingly with the word "upon," which tells you that
the sentence will have the form "upon a first event happening, a second
event will happen." The first event turns out to be a "(i) or (ii)" type of event,
and the drafter has so numbered the clauses to signal its disjunctive
structure.
From this point, things go rapidly downhill. The drafter chose to break the
complicated "(ii)" event — "payment or distribution of assets of the obligor to
creditors upon any dissolution or winding up or total or partial liquidation or
reorganization of the obligor" — into two halves. He then enveloped each half
in a dense swirl of qualifiers — "of any kind or character," "whether in cash,
property or securities," "whether voluntary or involuntary or in bankruptcy,
insolvency, receivership or other proceedings." The result is that, rather than
firmly pushing you in the right direction, the drafter has spun you around in a
dizzy whirl to the point where you miss the crucial turning — the "all principal
," which begins the description of the second event. Finally, the drafter has
separated the "all" from the verb "shall," which definitively signals the
longed-for second event, by 20 words.
One way to fix this sentence is by shortening it, most obviously by moving all
the qualifiers to a separate sentence. As we saw with Mattingly's long
sentence, it's relatively easy to break up long sentences. And with this
sentence, we need not worry that the drafter's artistry will be seriously
compromised.
But breaking up the sentence into smaller pieces isn't the only way to aid the
reader's understanding. The moral is that comprehensibility is the end, and
short sentences merely a means to that end — frequently the best means,
but not always.
Darmstadter is an assistant general counsel with Citigroup in New York City.
His e-mail is [email protected].
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