ABSTRACT
A LARGE amount of the litigation based on written instruments–whether statute, contract, will, conveyance or regulation–can be traced to the draftsman's failure to convey his meaning clearly. Frequently, of course, certain items may purposely be left ambiguous, but often the question in issue is due to an inadvertent ambiguity that could have been avoided had the draftsman clearly expressed what he intended to say. In this Article it is suggested that a new approach to drafting, using certain elementary notions of symbolic logic, can go a long way towards eliminating such inadvertent ambiguity. This new approach makes available to draftsmen a technique that achieves some of the clarity, precision and efficiency of analysis that symbolic logic provides. In addition, it can be a valuable aid in moving towards a more comprehensive and systematic method of interpretation,1 as well as drafting.
