神经科学与心理学2022sciencedirect.com
法律语言难懂源于写作糟糕而非专业概念
Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
进阶 · 约 40 分钟读完前置知识：实验心理学基础、基础统计、法律文本常识
导读
这篇发表在 Cognition 的论文研究法律文本为何难懂：它通过实验比较法律条文与改写版本（或与非法律文本对照），检验障碍究竟来自专业法律概念，还是来自句子结构、生僻词等写作方式。结论倾向于后者——把内容改用平实写法后，普通读者的理解显著改善，说明“写得差”比“术语专业”更是主因。
HN 关注点：HN 读者长期争论“法律文本本来就不是写给普通人看的”，这篇论文用实验证据支持“问题在写作而非概念”，加上德州宪法修正案这类真实案例，讨论自然热烈。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：支持 1 补充 2 亲历 1
支持用真实公投文本说明：面向全体选民的文本也写得令人无法理解，证明“非目标读者”的辩护站不住脚。
针对那些说“法律文本本来就不是给外行看的”评论：这是德州最近一条宪法修正案公投的原文，也就是全州所有选民都要投票表决的内容（长句引用略）。我有常春藤学历，仍然几乎读不懂，而且我认为部分措辞是有歧义的——比如“the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount”可以有两种解读。
hn_throwaway_99查看英文原文
For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the residence homestead of a person who is elderly or disabled to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on the homestead. I have an Ivy League education and I still could hardly understand it, and I still think some of the language is ambiguous (i.e. I think "the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount" can be interpreted both ways). https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2022/03/25/the-language-in-a-may-vote-to-lower-texas-property-taxes-is-so-confusing-that-its-incomprehensible/
亲历跨国签约亲历：美国法律语言最古旧，其他国家已有 plain English 改革；条款应写给外行看。
我在英语世界多地做过 CTO，也在这些地方（以及其他一些地方）签过合同；我妻子是英语世界的律师，这让我对法律行业的怪癖接触远超预期。我基本同意标题和摘要，但要强调美国在古旧语言方面最严重，入门门槛最高。英语世界多数国家在合同和立法上都经历过“简明英语”运动，而美国更固执地坚持“这套语言经过判例检验”。这在知识产权法里尤其普遍（也许是我的技术背景带来的偏见）。我也强烈反驳那些说外行不是很多合同的目标读者的人：尤其是 T&C（条款与条件），往往由合同法务写给法务或法官看，但绝对应该写得让外行看得懂。总之，法律行业可以也应当做得更好。
Quarrel查看英文原文
I've been a CTO at companies in various bits of the Anglosphere, and signed contracts in all of the bits (and some other places). I'm also married to an Anglosphere lawyer (which gives me lots more exposure than I might have guessed to the idiosyncrasies of the profession). In my experience, I very much agree with the headline (and abstract) here, but would emphasise that the US is the worst for archaic language, creating a worse barrier to entry. Most other countries in the Anglosphere have been through a "plain english" language push in both contract & legislation, while the US has stuck to "this language is proven through precedent" more stubbornly than anywhere else. This seems to be particularly prevalent in IP law, although that might be my tech bias showing. I would very much argue against those (even in this thread), that say that the lay-person isn't the intended audience for lots of contracts, particularly for T&Cs where they are often written by a contracts lawyer, for a contracts lawyer or judge, but should ABSOLUTELY be written for the lay-person to understand. Anyway, I think the legal profession can & should do better.
补充律师兼合同起草教师：问题在于懒惰或傲慢的起草者，解法是短小单一主题的段落（SSSP），类似软件模块化。
我是律师，也教合同起草。合同难读的最大问题是我们有太多 L.O.A.D.——Lazy Or Arrogant Drafters（懒惰或傲慢的起草者），至于 LOAD 的“O”指什么，你自己猜。相关还有一张 Dilbert 漫画（链接略）。简化合同语言最划算的做法是 SSSP：短小、单一主题的段落——更易读，谈判时更易审阅修改，也更容易在其他合同中复用。（这和软件里的模块化、正交性很像。）更多吐槽和病态的前后对比例子见我的课程材料（这版还很粗糙，我正在重构）。
dctoedt查看英文原文
Lawyer and contract-drafting teacher here. The biggest problem with unreadable contracts is that we have too many L.O.A.D.s: Lazy Or Arrogant Drafters. (You can decide for yourself: L.O.A.D. of what?) There's a relevant Dilbert cartoon: [0] To simplify contract language, the biggest bang for the buck comes from SSSP: Short, Single-Subject Paragraphs, which are much easier to read; to review and revise during contract negotiations; and to reuse in other contracts. (It's not unlike modularity and orthogonality in software.) For more ranting on that subject — with some pathological before-and-after examples — see my online course materials (this version isn't pretty; I'm almost done refactoring it). [1] [0] https://dilbert.com/strip/2008-08-28 [1] https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Notes-on-Contract-Drafting-2021-01-22.html#short-sentences
补充用“描述一张图”的类比解释难读文本的成因：逐个讲部件再讲连接，必然产生大量回指；而精确性要求又排斥举例式写法。
我认为这种“写得差”——即句子长、回指多、难理解——和许多学者不擅长解释、以及源代码难读是同一原因。我自己就常被人指出解释能力很差，我想我知道原因。当我朴素地描述一个复杂互联的概念（比如一段数学，或一个实现某功能的程序）时，我先有一个心理图景——一张概念互联的图，然后像描述一幅画那样去描述它：分别细致地讲每个可见部分，再讲部分之间的连接。这种“准确”的描述风格自然导致大量回指，别人很难跟上。其实有办法讲清楚：复现一个人在现实约束下如何想出这个模型的过程，用例子说明问题和解法——人们从几个例子推导规则，远好于反过来。但这种风格既费力又往往不够精确，在合同或代码这类场景常常不可接受。
torginus查看英文原文
I think this "poor writing", as in hard to understand writing with long backreferences is due to the same reasons as why many academics are terrible at explaining things, as well as why source code is hard to read. I should know, others usually like pointing out how terrible I am at explaining things. And I think I know why. When I make a naive attempt at describing a complex, interconnected concept, such as a piece of math, or a program that does a thing I start with a mental picture - a graph of interconnected concepts. Then I try to describe the picture - the same way one would describe a painting. I describe each visible part separately, often in great detail, then I try to describe the links and interconnections between parts. This sort of 'accurate' descriptive style naturally leads to huge backreferences, and people usually have a ton of trouble following along. However I think there's a way of getting your point across - one basically needs to reproduce the thought process of how one would come up with the given model given the real world constraints, illustrating the issue and its proposed solution with examples. It is often said that people are much better at deriving the rules from a few examples than the other way around. However this sort of descriptive style takes both a lot of effort, and usually is less precise, which often is not acceptable, such as in the case of contracts or computer code.
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