3.1. Form
Making legislation more accessible
Structure/ layout
- Preamble
- Title and objectives
- Scope
- Definitions
- Principles
Style: A few considerations when drafting or amending a piece of legislation
- How to number titles, parts, sections, subsections, paragraphs, subparagraphs, and so forth.
- How to use indentation to distinguish subsections, paragraphs, and further subdivisions. (Indenting can make a text easier to read.)
- When to use numerals and when to use words in referring to numbers.
- When to capitalize words, especially words that refer to parts of the government, such as ministry, agency, department, or court and words in cross-references, such as act, law, part, or section.
- How to refer to dates (e.g., 10 June, June 10, or June 10th).
- How to refer to sums of money.
- How to resolve common punctuation issues, such as whether to use a comma before the conjunction in a series.
- (http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/legal/docs/lpo64.pdf)
Language:
- using local language and dialects (e.g. Cape Verde). Importance of good translation.
- using plain language
- Breaking text down into shorter sentences and subsections
- gender sensitive language