One of the common traps into which attorneys fall when advocating is the use of the word clearly. Eliminating this word is one of the easiest revisions to make, since it means nothing. If you use clearly, take it out. Even better, don't start using it in the first place. Clearly is an ineffective intensifier. No judge reads a brief--or for that matter, no one reads any piece of advocacy, legal or not--and says, "Well, your opponent says that the evidence 'proves his guilt,' but since you said that the evidence 'clearly proves his innocence,' you must be right." In other words, clearly never pushes your readers one way or another. They do not say, "You said that something was erroneous, but had you said it was 'clearly erroneous,' I would have supported you. That's a whole different story!"
But don't take my word for it. Here's what Chief Justice John Roberts told the Northwestern University School of Law back in 2007:
"We get hundreds and hundreds of briefs, and they're all the same," Roberts told a crowd of eager law students and faculty members last week at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago. "Somebody says, 'My client clearly deserves to win, the cases clearly do this, the language clearly reads this,' blah, blah blah. And you pick up the other side and, lo and behold, they think they clearly deserve to win."
In short, clearly smacks of desperation. I was reminded of this in a recent article by Alec MacGillis and Paul Farhi in the Washington Post entitled "In Obama's speeches, one favorite phrase: "Let me be clear.'" MacGillis and Fahri discuss Obama's overuse of this set-up in his speeches. They write that "in a presidency in which everything is murkier than Obama could have imagined, the 'let me be clear' preface has become a signal that what follows will be anything but." Has Obama used the phrase so often that it is now cliche, a metaphorical device that once was to be taken literally but through overuse has lost all meaning?
In the beginning, when he was still a presidential candidate, Obama used the device to say, "Listen to what I am about to tell you. Sometimes what I say might be opaque, but I tell you this with no trace of ambiguity or shred of doubt." MacGillis and Fahri say that once Obama became president, he used the phrase to defend against his detractors, to rebut them when things were really not that clear. His opponents saw the phrase "as a sign of indecision to follow."
Of course, the other problem with overusing the phrase "let me be clear" is that it implies that there are times when he is not being clear, when he is not as assured or unambiguous or decisive. In his November speech announcing the troop increase in Afghanistan, Obama pronounced his clarity eleven times. Not only does he risk tiring his audience with the phrase, but he also risks removing the power from the phrase when he really does mean to be clear.
To sum: don't overuse any stylistic technique or rhetorical device. When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.
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