A Glossary of Constitutional Terms: English / Nepali

Avoidance of PunctuationDrafters of legal texts often avoid relying on punctuation to get theirmessage across, and this practice sometimes extends to avoidingvirtually all punctuation except the full stop. One reason for this wasthat earlier, there were no specific rules of grammar, spelling andpunctuation. The other reason was that printers were unreliable, aswas their equipment in some cases. Even today, there are reasonsfor not relying too heavily on punctuation to convey meaning.First, even with rules about punctuation, modern standards ofpunctuation are not good and are, perhaps, getting worse, thanks toa general lack of rigour in thinking. Second, if someone has to gettheir meaning across without relying on punctuation they will haveto think, and think clearly, about what they want to say.We find this propensity for drafting without the aid of punctuationamong legal experts even today. For example, the Arizona LegislativeBill Drafting Manual, 2006 version 1 , says, 'A properly drafted billrequires little punctuation.' Nowadays, legal writers prefer, instead,the use of short sentences—not the long sentences withoutpunctuation, so often found in the past.The Use of Long SentencesIIAnother custom is to have only one sentence in a section, clause orsubsection. The custom of using long sentences was prevalent incountries that opted for 'common law' (the system which originatedin England and came to Nepal partly through India) but not incountries like France, which follow the 'civil law' tradition. Today,however, even in countries that follow the legislative tradition ofthe Common Law, this custom is breaking down.A Glossary of Constitutional Terms