want
them to know because clear writing stems from a “precision of
thought”.
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To explain this function of a text, imagine that a traveller asks you for
directions as to how to get to a town some distance away. Your essential task
is to give them step-by-step instructions as to how to get there. Like these
directions, clear writing proceeds in a step-by-step way, where each idea flows
logically from the one before it.
Writing can also perform other functions. It can create emotions. It can also
seek to persuade a reader as to something. Persuasion actually derives from
the other two functions. It involves information consisting of facts and reason,
as well as emotion’
Legal writing can potentially perform any of these functions. However, its
most basic and most common function is to convey information.
Consequently this basic account of legal writing will focus exclusively on that.
A text actually performs three functions for a reader regarding conveying
information:
(1)
Function 1 Storing Information. A text stores information that the reader
can access when they read the text.
(2)
Function 2 Retrieving Information. A text can assist the reader to
retrieve specific pieces of information from a text by inserting appropriate
finding devices.
(3)
Function 3 Interpreting Information. A text can assist the reader to
interpret information.
Function 1. Storing Information
It is the essence of a text that it stores information. This is the major function
of the text. Fundamentally, information in a text will be one, or a combination
of, five types:
(1)
Words. Words are mostly located in the text itself as prose, but may
also be found in tables, lists, headings, citations and labels on pictures and
diagrams.
(2)
Symbols.
(3)
Numbers.
(4)
Pictures. ‘Picture’ is a generic term for such things as diagrams, graphs,
photographs, drawings, and paintings. Where a legal text is electronic it can
store information as motion pictures.
(5)
Sound. Where a text is electronic it can store information as sound.
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Gibbs (1993) p 495
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