User:Opencooper/Against lawyerisms
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Lawyerisms (not to be confused with legalese) are what I see as formatting in articles that tries to emulate the style of legal documents. This is often awkward, confusing, and goes against the Wikipedia's own house style.
Lawyerisms include:
- Use of "and/or"; see MOS:ANDOR
- Slashes in general, which often lead to ambiguities
- "(s)" to encompass both singular and plural (e.g. "item(s)"); in most cases, the plural will suffice
- All-caps for emphasis; this is to be avoided, and instead, italics should be used
- Capitalizing of non-proper names (e.g. "Defendant")
- Artificial shorthand naming: for example, Google Chrome is commonly referred to as "Chrome", but doing this for arbitrary terms would imply accepted use. Instead, the subject could be referred to by its categorization, such as "the application"
- Inline lists (e.g. "There was the choice between 1) foo or 2) bar"); while this may be appropriate in some cases, often the numbering is unnecessary or it would be better off as an actual list
- Use of non-numbers for lists, such as Roman numerals or letters: this is also subjective, but if the sequence of items matters, numbers are more standard, while the other types are not often used outside of legal contexts
- Including "TM" or other legal designations; see MOS:TMRULES