Contract language matters

When people communicate, they use language as a means to convey thoughts to one another, but they rarely share identical backgrounds, education, or language skills. Despite this fact, some kind of shared understanding needs to occur for a successful communication.

The same is true for contracts: contracts are, by definition, agreements between two (or more) parties, and agreement cannot form without shared understanding. In practice, however, this is not always the case, as the contracting parties often choose to leave certain matters unspecified in order to allow for some leeway in the interpretation of the agreements.

This can become a problem when a tendency toward abstract language and an overly rigid adherence to the language used in legal texts (for example, in sustainability matters) inadvertently keeps contractual matters at too abstract a level. This is why language plays a key role in formulating contracts.