13 August 2013 - misreading

A diet product may claim “20% less” hoping you misread it as “20% as much,” but the real trick is in the selection: “20% less nonsenseword (that you shouldn’t care about, and we won’t mention that it has twice as much ickystuff)”. Lawyers can’t use the selection trick because the law insists that you say everything, so they’ve become expert at the misreading trick. And that causes trouble: How are we to know when “except as permitted by law” means “except as required by law” and when it means “to the fullest extent permitted by law”?