What is POFP?

Why do lawyers refer to long documents as briefs and
18-year olds as infants? Why do they use so much Latin when so few of their
clients are Ancient Romans? Is it a conspiracy?


Party of the First Part has the answers! Check out the Website for the
Legalese Hall of Shame; a glossary of legal words linked to Adam Freedman's
columns; tips on writing legal documents in plain English; and more!



Sunday, August 12, 2007

Announcing the Golden Gobbledygook Award!


Just what you've all been waiting for -- a Prize for the best example of bad legalese.

The term "gobbledygook" was coined by a Texas congressman, Henry Maverick. He meant for the word to evoke the sound that gobbling turkeys make. The word was meant as an indictment of confusing legalese and officialese.

But people have come to take legalese in stride; to which POFP says "Enough!

Send the worst example of legalese you can lay your hands on to POFP (adamjfreedman@yahoo.com) -- and you can be the proud winner of the Golden Gobbledygook Award. The winner will get a boxed set (without the box) of my new book The Party of the First Part, together with Jeremy Blachman's Anonymous Lawyer, and Grammar Girl's new audiobook! The first two runners-up will also receive prizes. Entries will be accepted until September 14th. The winner will be announced on September 21st.

Looking for inspiration? Check out the Legalese Hall of Shame at POFP's website.

90 comments:

Cheryl Stephens said...

FYI, Maverick created the name gobbledygook for the stuff that the turkey spits up and out, and then applied it to bad writing.

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Cheryl - thanks! That is interesting even though - well, it's kinda gross, don't you think? I didn't even know that turkeys spit. Where are their manners?

But hey - there's a contest going on - so I hope you'll send me some gobbledygook (figuratively speaking).

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I have about 20 Meg of overblown legalese to submit. I only have to convert it from Lotus to a program people use in the 21st Century.

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