Читать книгу Collins Improve Your Writing Skills - Graham King - Страница 12

Here’s a verbal smokescreen from a London borough council:

And take further notice that under the provisions of Section 47(2) of the said Housing Act 1974 in relation to any land consisting of or including Housing Accommodation in a Housing Action Area a landlord must not less than four weeks before the expiry by effluxion of time of any tenancy which expires without the service of any Notice to Quit, notify the council in writing that the tenancy is about to expire in accordance with the said Schedule 4 . . .

This is a model of mixed officialese and legalese: you can almost see the glint of watch-and-chain on the Town Clerk’s egg-stained black waistcoat. How do we turn it into something like English, without losing any legal force the passage might be required to have?

For a start, there appears to be no need for And take further notice. If the reader is not going to take notice, there seems little point in the writer’s finishing this masterwork. Next: under the provisions of Section 47(2) of the said Housing Act 1974 – the words the provisions of are redundant. Let’s lose them. The same goes for said.

And next: in relation to any land consisting of or including. The lawyers can keep their consisting of or including, just in case they are struggling to cover, say, a backyard or front garden where someone lives in a caravan. But in relation to can be shortened to concerning. We have now brought concerning clumsily close to consisting, so let us replace consisting of with that consists of. The word Accommodation after Housing is not needed. And once Housing is left standing by itself, the capital H becomes even more obviously unnecessary.

Plodding on: a landlord must not less than four weeks before the expiry by effluxion of time . . . Quickly to the dictionary – to seek out the meaning of this excitingly unfamiliar word, effluxion. We find:

Efflux, n. Flowing out (of liquid, air, gas; also fig.) That which flows out. Hence effluxion, n. See effluence, n.

From its meaning the word certainly suits the prose style, if nothing else. But we can do without effluxion. And we can also do without expiry.

Now, what is the rest of the message? It seems that in a Housing Action Area, if a landlord knows that a tenancy is running out and no notice to quit is needed, he must warn the council, in writing, at least four weeks before that tenancy is due to end. So let’s tack that information on to our earlier repair:

Under Section 47(2) of the Housing Act 1974, concerning any land that consists of or includes housing in a Housing Action Area, if a landlord knows that a tenancy is due to end without need of a notice to quit, he or she must tell the council, in writing, at least four weeks before the tenancy runs out.

The passage is no nail-biter and is still scarcely slick or smooth. But it is quite readable and clear and certainly less forbidding than the original mess.