{"id":387,"date":"2025-06-18T18:38:25","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T01:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/?p=387"},"modified":"2025-06-18T18:38:25","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T01:38:25","slug":"dont-be-elegant-be-exact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/dont-be-elegant-be-exact\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t be elegant; be exact"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"break-words\n          tvm-parent-container\"><span dir=\"ltr\">My colleagues know my feelings about using the passive voice to describe the parties&#8217; obligations in a contract. It&#8217;s fine, in elegant literature or in a revolutionary tract, to describe what is to be done. A contract should state who is promising to do something. A lease that states only that &#8220;Rent will be paid on the first day of the month and is delinquent if not received by the 10th day of the month&#8221; hasn&#8217;t imposed an obligation on the tenant to pay rent to the landlord.<br \/>\nDon&#8217;t be elegant; be exact.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My colleagues know my feelings about using the passive voice to describe the parties&#8217; obligations in a contract. It&#8217;s fine, in elegant literature or in a revolutionary tract, to describe what is to be done. A contract should state who is promising to do something. A lease that states only that &#8220;Rent will be paid [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":388,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Fountain-pen-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":389,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions\/389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}