So this is interesting. I work for a small investment firm. I've been put in charge of rewriting our disclosure document, which is supposed to give background information on the firm and enumerate potential conflicts of interest. As of 2011 the Securities and Exchange Commission now requires that these documents be written in what they term as "plain English." They have an ~80 page document with a forward by Warren Buffett which explains what this means in terms of the language and formatting. http://www.sec.gov/pdf/handbook.pdf

Here is a "before" example:



That's an investment prospectus in the typical-looking waiver type of crap that takes a long time to sort through and figure out. Here's that same document rewritten according to one interpretation of the new guidelines:



In this example the text is formatted a little too much like a Powerpoint slide for my aesthetic sense, but from the consumer's perspective is still a big improvement.

[Edited on January 4, 2011 at 8:33 PM. Reason : fixed image tags]

1/4/2011 8:32:08 PM

i think the "word" you're looking "for" is "foreword"

1/4/2011 8:50:44 PM

plz 2 have them do this to bills in congress--way to much legalese...

1/4/2011 9:42:16 PM

I'm all for plain english documents, laws, etc. It's a pain in the ass to read laws and figure out what the hell they mean... which just another way for the government to fuck the people.

1/4/2011 9:45:16 PM

I say that you write out the disclosure on your boss's car windshield in feces and/or vomit.

1/4/2011 9:57:23 PM

now that's rather immature

1/4/2011 10:00:17 PM

Almost as immature as this:
http://thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=414547

1/4/2011 10:02:59 PM

Quote :

"In this example the text is formatted a little too much like a Powerpoint slide for my aesthetic sense, but from the consumer's perspective is still a big improvement."

It looks like it's using all the common buzzwords they threw out in that graphic design theory class I took (woo, so exciting). It flows better and separates things into logical areas, and more or less tell the priority of what you need to read just from a quick glance at the page. It would be nice to have more documents like this when going into different things.

I recently got some sort of member voting thing for one of my 401k funds and just ignored the shit out of it because none of it made any sense besides the clearly written parts which said "we are voting in these people to make the fund better, check these boxes". I didn't much care for that with all the bullshit that came with it so I ignored it. I don't live to spend an hour reading the fine print behind a fucking vote for some wealthy schmuck who wants to join the board of a major investment fund. Thinking back, I should have voted no out of spite. Lawyers make everything too god damn difficult.

1/4/2011 10:44:41 PM

Quote :

"Lawyers make everything too god damn difficult."

Job Security

1/4/2011 11:03:29 PM

you haven't read legalese until you've read an indian government contract. between the lawyer speak and indian pseudo english, its been two years and i still haven't deciphered the whole thing.

[Edited on January 4, 2011 at 11:11 PM. Reason : .]

1/4/2011 11:09:41 PM

your odds in any given lawsuit are probably just as good if no parties understand the contract as if every party understands it

1/4/2011 11:21:21 PM

I just received my latest health insurance benefits novel, 143 pages. It's not so much that the documents use legalese as they have to throw in every little unique situation to CYA and limit any sort of liability. This really is the fault of the lawyers and the bureaucracy. It's ever expanding to meet it's ever expanding needs.

1/5/2011 7:01:02 AM

blame the romans

1/5/2011 10:17:14 AM

Quote :

"Almost as immature as this: http://thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=414547"

That's not merely immature. It is a TWW classic.

1/5/2011 2:24:19 PM