Some folks may believe that writing well and Christmas have little in common, but I dispelled that notion two years ago in my post about writing well on Christmas. And I have uncovered additional evidence for this holiday season.
I wasn't looking for that evidence, but it popped up in a sales contract that I was reading. The line was something like, "If any Good is nonconforming...." Wait a second. How can the "Good" be non-conforming? Wouldn't that fall to the province of the "Bad"? Then it hit me: the drafter was using "Good" as the singular of "Goods," a term of art defined in the Uniform Commercial Code ("UCC"), the statute regulating the sale of Goods adopted by almost every State.
But not "Good." The UCC doesn't use that word. The reason is simple. Would you walk into your local dry cleaners and ask "Is my pant ready?" You would likely get a quizzical expression from the clerk who might reply, "What? Are you out of breath?"
In the same way, the word "Good" shouldn't be used as the singular for "Goods," because "Goods," like "pants," are nouns that are always plural, as in having an "s" on the end. Professor Bryan Garner in his authoritative Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage agrees but notes that "this [singular] usage has made such inroads that it is unlikely to be stopped...although still considered unidiomatic by those with sensitive ears." Maybe I have sensitive ears, as do the drafters of the UCC where the word "Good" (as the singular for "Goods") can't be found.
Would there ever be a need to use the singular sense of "Goods" in a contract? I can't think of any. But even so, the grammatically-correct solution is simple: just say "one or more Goods." (Thanks to legal writing guru Ken Adams for that suggestion.)
This (and similar simple fixes for legal jargon) often elude lawyers who read, write and work with contracts. The problem isn't that most lawyers can't write, but they think that they can. Or that it doesn't matter. It matters because the courts are rife with disputes over the use of legal jargon. So poor legal writing harms contracting parties and hurts the legal profession. Writing-impaired lawyers should start with perusing the Michigan Bar Journal's "Plain Language" columns indexed here. Thus begins the road to recovery.
Might "good" be better used in a different context, say at Christmas? Charles Dickens certainly used the word correctly in this excerpt from A Christmas Carol:
But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely.
So cheers to you, may you do "good" at Christmas, and may you give and receive a few "Goods" too!
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