[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 153

[Steve Bennett]

On 12/19/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On the other hand, even though "Legal experts have stated
> that Y [cite][cite]" is clearly valid, it doesn't properly convey
> what the sources indicate.  There ought to be some way to
> record that a standard legal database did not provide ANY
> contrary opinions.  Given how much lawyers love to argue
> with each other, this is a highly unusual situation.

I think a better way to handle some of these issues is to accept that
straying into the grey area of OR is unavoidable, so let's come up
with good ways to do it. "The consensus of academic opinion in X
database appears to indicate that" is better than "The consensus of
academic opinion in X database is that", for example.

"Appears that", "is probably" etc are key words that indicate to the
reader that the interpreter is us, and therefore not very reliable. We
have a similar situation when we need to indicate that *we* (the
nameless, voiceless writer) don't actually know something: "Whether
there are other species with these characteristics is not known" can
be a bit ambiguous (who doesn't know it - scientists, or us, the
laypeople).

Steve