Read My Lips - the blog

Now Tiger says - - -

I am going to post this entire posting I found at The Volokh Conspiracy:

[Eugene Volokh, 5:11 PM]

Pointless parentheticals: How Appealing quotes this line (for a reason irrelevant to this post),

Chittakone Chanthasouxat ('Chanthasouxat') and Keopaseuth Xayasane ('Xayasane') (collectively, 'Defendants') appeal their convictions for drug-related offenses

and says in passing "Of course, a persuasive argument can be made that all three of those parentheticals are unnecessary too, but don't get me started."

Well, this does get me started. Why do lawyers think it's helpful to have obvious parentheticals like this? If there is only one Chanthasouxat in the case, people will release [sic] that Chanthasouxat refers to that Chanthasouxat. If there is more than one, then you shouldn't call either Chanthasouxat. Likewise, there were exactly two defendants in the cases being considered in the opinion; who else would "Defendants" refer to?

Sometimes, a parenthetical like this may be helpful, for instance when one is introducing an acronym that's common enough to be worth using, but not so common that it's obvious. But often -- as here -- the abbreviation (whether a last name or "defendants") is so utterly obvious that I just see no reason at all to include it.

Grrr. Well, feels good to get that off my chest.

What Eugene is ranting about is inane. I mean, yes, I agree that the parentheticals are redundant and useless. If I had written that, it would say:

Chittakone Chanthasouxat (hereinafter referred to as "Idiot C") and Keopaseuth Xayasane (hereinafter referred to as "Idiot X") (collectively hereinafter referred to as "Idiots") appeal their convictions for drug-related offenses.

or

Chittakone Chanthasouxat (hereinafter referred to as "Persecuted Citizen C") and Keopaseuth Xayasane (hereinafter referred to as "Persecuted Citizen X") (collectively hereinafter referred to as "Persecuted Citizens") appeal their convictions for drug-related offenses.

depending on whether I was opposing their appeal or advocating such. Mostly, I just would hate to have to type Chittakone Chanthasouxat and Keopaseuth Xayasane more than once and assume, herein, that they would rather I did not refer to them as Cheeto and Kato X, or something similar. Descriptive definition is the best I could do.

Posted by Tiger at August 22, 2003 08:40 PM | TrackBack