{"id":93,"date":"2017-11-17T11:21:36","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T19:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/?p=93"},"modified":"2020-02-08T14:59:29","modified_gmt":"2020-02-08T22:59:29","slug":"the-passive-voice-in-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/the-passive-voice-in-contracts\/","title":{"rendered":"The passive voice is to be avoided"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ember5958\" class=\"feed-shared-update-v2__description-wrapper ember-view\">\n<div id=\"ember5959\" class=\"feed-shared-inline-show-more-text feed-shared-update-v2__description feed-shared-inline-show-more-text--minimal-padding feed-shared-inline-show-more-text--5-lines feed-shared-inline-show-more-text--expanded ember-view\">\n<div id=\"ember5960\" class=\"feed-shared-text relative feed-shared-update-v2__commentary ember-view\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<div id=\"ember5961\" class=\"feed-shared-text__text-view feed-shared-text-view white-space-pre-wrap break-words ember-view\"><span id=\"ember5964\" class=\"ember-view\">In great literature, the passive voice may be used to good effect to convey immutable fate, actions of the invisible, or Kafkaesque bureaucracy.\u00a0 Not so in business law.\u00a0 If you won&#8217;t be submitting your contract for the Pulitzer Prize, then don&#8217;t use the passive voice when you&#8217;re writing it.\u00a0 Compare &#8220;Rent payments that are not received by the 5th day of the month will incur a 5% late fee&#8221; with &#8220;If Landlord does not receive Tenant&#8217;s rent in full by the 5th day of the month, then Tenant will pay Landlord a late fee of 5% of the full amount of that month&#8217;s rent.&#8221; <\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"feed-shared-text__text-view feed-shared-text-view white-space-pre-wrap break-words ember-view\"><span id=\"ember5964\" class=\"ember-view\">Strive to be clear.\u00a0 If you don&#8217;t understand your contract when you&#8217;re signing it, the jury won&#8217;t understand it when you have to sue on it.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"ember5966\" class=\"social-details-social-activity update-v2-social-activity ember-view\">\n<div id=\"ember5967\" class=\"social-details-social-activity ember-view\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In great literature, the passive voice may be used to good effect to convey immutable fate, actions of the invisible, or Kafkaesque bureaucracy.\u00a0 Not so in business law.\u00a0 If you won&#8217;t be submitting your contract for the Pulitzer Prize, then don&#8217;t use the passive voice when you&#8217;re writing it.\u00a0 Compare &#8220;Rent payments that are not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-writing","category-real-estate","category-the-law-of-business"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","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=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}