atw: Re: Should and would
- From: Bob Trussler <bob.trussler@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:22:02 +1100
Howard,
Some places use SHALL and WILL in a legal or semi-legal context, and some
time later it turns up in pseudo-legal speak, officialese, and
bureaucratese.
As noted previously, this special usage in the legal context needs to be
defined up front.
Bob T
2009/10/20 Howard Silcock <howard.silcock@xxxxxxxxx>
> I have been reading through some of the administrative circulars here in
> the Government department where I work. I was struck by how much they use
> 'should' and, to a lesser extent, 'would'. Typically, you find phrases like
> 'Staff should follow this procedure when ...' or 'I would like to remind
> staff of the importance of keeping accurate records of meetings'. Why not
> just write 'Follow this procedure when...' and 'Keep accurate records of
> meetings', or maybe 'Remember to keep accurate records of meetings'?
>
> I was tempted to formulate a rule "avoid 'should' and 'would' in technical
> writing", but realised that there are a few cases (really very few, I'd say)
> when I would [yes, I'm doing it now myself] regard it as OK. Still, I
> wondered why so much is written about avoiding passives, and when not to use
> the future tense, but no-one seems to point to the deadening effect of
> strings of 'shoulds' and hypotheticals. Even a sentence like 'If your user
> name were jsmith, your personal site's URL would be
> http://mysite.com/personal/jsmith/default.aspx'<http://mysite.com/personal/jsmith/default.aspx%27>probably
> reads better (at least, in my view) as 'For a user name jsmith, the
> personal site's URL is http://mysite.com/personal/jsmith/default.aspx '.
> (On the other hand, I don't think the sentence 'Edit the information as you
> would in a Microsoft Word document' needs changing.)
>
> Does anyone know of any usage guide that addresses this topic? I looked in
> 'Read Me First', but couldn't see anything. And can anyone suggest other
> good examples where 'would' and 'should' are OK - in other words, examples
> that go against my proposed rule? Maybe I can reformulate it as a 'rule with
> some exceptions' - something linguists would probably feel fine about but
> which my mathematical background makes me definitely reluctant to accept!
>
> Howard
>
>
>
--
Bob Trussler
Phone 0418 661 462
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