The purpose of this section is to let notice how the UN respects a very strict rule of conduct for some aspects of UN resolutions such as their structure and graphological devices while it is vague for other issues such as the precise meanings of preambulatory and operative clauses which will be analysed later in this chapter.
Professor David Crystal (2004: 194) has defined legal English as:
[…] an essentially visual language, meant to be scrutinised in silence: it is, in fact, largely unspeakable at first sight, and anyone who tries to produce a spoken version is likely to have to go through a process of repeated and careful scanning in order to sort out the grammatical relationships which give the necessary clues to adequate phrasing.
Graphological devices in legal and diplomatic documents help the reader understand the relationship between different levels of information. Drafters are supposed to think carefully about white space, column width, line spacing, and paragraph length, because these elements determine the rate of complexity, which can interfere with the comprehensibility of a text. In fact, generous use of white space on the page enhances readability, and emphasizes important points. The dissection of legal and diplomatic texts into sections, subsections, paragraphs, and other units and subunits according to the character of information that is being mediated, makes information easier to be absorbed in one quick glance.
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As concerns United Nations documents, the first Security Council resolutions did not follow the fixed layout format that is used today.
Nowadays, the United Nations has adopted a comprehensive editorial manual, the United Nations Editorial Manual (1983), which represents an authoritative statement of guidelines of the style to be followed for the drafting United Nations documents, Security Council resolutions included.
It was first published in 1983, and since 2004 the United Nations has been compiling an online version which is being completed.56 The Manual mainly focuses on style guidelines and includes a specific section on resolutions and other formal decisions of the United Nations organs, concerning both its system of identification drafting, and editing rules. It gives detailed guidelines on several aspects, including the use of capitalisation, the order of elements, numbering and arrangement of paragraphs, references to paragraphs and to other resolutions and decisions, use of italics and punctuation, abbreviations, wording of resolutions, references to the Secretariat, references to money, names of newly established bodies and annexes.
For instance, according to the Manual, italicisation has to be used for the names of organs and institutions (e.g. the Security Council); to stress preambulatory and operative phrases (e.g. Taking note, Welcomes ); in case of two operative verbs in the same clause the second should not be italicised although the Manual suggests not putting two operative clauses in the same paragraph, unless they are closely interlinked, otherwise there could be the risk that these decisions could be underestimated.
Another section of the Manual gives guidelines on punctuation. According to the Manual, columns are to be used to introduce a quotation or lists of subparagraphs. Commas are used at the end of each preambulatory clause, while operative clauses are terminated with a semi-column; the Saxon genitive should not be used with abbreviations or acronyms, countries, or organisations, preferring the form with ‗of‘.
Another section of the Manual regards the numbering and arrangement of paragraphs and subparagraphs. As already described in Chapter 2 of the present research, according to the current practice, preambulatory clauses are not numbered; operative paragraphs are numbered with Arabic numerals, but a single operative clause is not numbered. Moreover, if a preambulatory or operative clause is subdivided into subparagraphs, the first degree of subparagraphs is identified by lower-case
56 Source: http://69.94.137.26/editorialcontrol/index.htm (Last accessed: June 2011).
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letters between parentheses: (a), (b), (c), etc.; while a second degree subdivision is indicated by lower-case roman numerals between parentheses: (i), (ii), etc.
As far as concerns references, to make reference to an operative clause, it should be identified by its number (for example resolution 34/50, paragraph 5). The term ―operative‖ should not be added, as only operative clauses are identified by numbers. When it is necessary to refer to a specific paragraph of a preamble, ordinal numbers should be used, for example ―the first second preambular paragraph.‖
The Manual also gives some indications on how to use wordings that have a slight difference between each other. In case of two or more consecutive paragraphs beginning with the same preambular/operative verb, the word ―also‖ is added in the second occurrence and ―further‖ is included in the third paragraph and the additional word should be italicised.
However, in some cases, such as in some resolutions relating to Iraq, the order between ‗also‘
and ‗further‘ has not always been respected, as in the following example:
(8) Deploring the fact that Iraq has not provided an accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure, as required by resolution 687 (1991), of all aspects of its programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles with a range greater than one hundred and fifty kilometres, and of all holdings of such weapons […],
Deploring further that Iraq repeatedly obstructed immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to sites designated by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) […],
Deploring also that the Government of Iraq has failed to comply with its commitments pursuant to
resolution 687 (1991) with regard to terrorism, pursuant to resolution 688 (1991) to end repression of its civilian population […]. (S/RES/1441 (2002))57
The UN gives a very strict rule of conduct also for the structure of UN resolutions, as will be seen in the following subparagraph which illustrates the relationship between the structure of a resolution and some underlying rhetoric devices.