All-Caps

Poor Writing, not Specialized Concepts, Drives Processing Difficulty in Legal Language

“…In most cases, this difference was striking. Prior to our study, there had been long-standing speculation and anecdotal accounts of the presence of these features in legal texts, and more recent studies had to some degree identified the prevalence of passive voice (Goźdź-Roszkowski, 2011) and non-standard capitalization (Arbel & Toler, 2020) in legal contracts, either on a smaller scale or with regard to specific types of contracts. Our study provides the first large-scale systematic account of the presence of all of these features in legal texts, both overall and relative to a baseline.…”

“…Non-standard capitalization is ubiquitous in provisions such as warranty disclaimers and limitations of liability, which "must be conspicuous" in order to be legally upheld (American Law Institute and National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, 2002). Arbel and Toler (2020) found that most standard form agreements used by major companies contain at least one provision in all-caps. Although the use of all-caps provisions is ostensibly for the benefit of the reader, evidence suggests that they do not aid comprehension (Arbel & Toler, 2020).…”

“…Arbel and Toler (2020) found that most standard form agreements used by major companies contain at least one provision in all-caps. Although the use of all-caps provisions is ostensibly for the benefit of the reader, evidence suggests that they do not aid comprehension (Arbel & Toler, 2020). Here we sought to determine what percentage of words in contracts were in ALL CAPS relative to standard English.…”