All Lawyers Are Not Liars: True or False?

October 5, 2011, 7:32 pm

Actor posing as lawyer

If you answered “True,” would you also say that all pizzas are not edible, or that all editors are not sticklers, or that all peeves are not justified?

As you know very well, you would be wrong in every case. It’s not true that all lawyers are not liars, because some lawyers are liars. To accurately express what you probably believe to be true, you should write “Not all lawyers are liars”—although the first construction has become so commonplace that even though I’m an editor, and even though not all editors are sticklers, I feel a little stickler-y making a fuss over it.

And yet this particular gaffe is worth some fuss. Some seemingly similar errors—like the misplacing of only—are easier to forgive because everyone knows what you mean by them. I only* make adjustments to only if its position in the sentence helps to clarify a critical difference in meaning: She only fears robots when they’re programmed to sing off key. (Does she fear nothing else, including robots with perfect pitch?)

But “all are not” in place of “not all are” almost guarantees that the reader will stumble. We take “all X” to mean “every single X.” All humans are mortal. So when you start a sentence with “All lawyers,” a reader is justified in expecting that you have something to say that is true of all lawyers. And if it turns out to be that they are “not liars,” you’ve just confounded things.

Language and writing are already rife with comparatively harmless word confusions: flammable vs. inflammable, regardless vs. irregardless. But “all are not” and “not all are” are such bald statements of logic and clarity that to confuse them is to mess with our most fundamental notions of being.

Let’s not.

*QED.

Photo of posed actor by Kevin McShane.

This entry was posted in Editing, Grammar, Style, Words, Writing. Bookmark the permalink.

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http://twitter.com/profacero Professor Zero

Hm – on #1, doesn’t Zenith have such courses already and isn’t it the faculty which designs curriculum already? This sounds like an advising issue — I notice gen ed students are often assigned to the courses in whatever discipline that would in fact be the least interesting to them. Also, there are better arguments for the humanities than “learning citizenship.” I’m all for cutting administration in favor of converting adjunct jobs into more real and better paid jobs, though.

On #2, you’d have to actually have other institutions nearby. We don’t, it would be a huge amount of driving for the faculty member, adjuncts do it briefly sometimes but never for long. We already share classes by video and online.

On #3, we do close programs, fire tenured faculty, and so on. And we do constantly produce documents with new explanations of the value of our fields. I am writing an external, institutional grant in which I am explaining the importance of having current books and journals in the library, and I am looking for fresh new ways to dress up this fact. All of this justification takes time from real work and unless you’re an adrenalin junkie, it isn’t exciting or renewing, it’s just draining.

I agree though about the boom and bust cycles. Not having funding for the library every year is a key example of not planning for the long term. My institution does try to think for the long term but the legislature/governor don’t really let it.

Of course, the way in which we already do all the things you suggest is a weak way — it’s always in response to already being broke. The strong way would mean spending money to set up the alliances. I come from a state where there was cooperation among institutions but here they are competing, and are not all under the same board, etc., and each one is its own world. I think it would take decades to develop a different culture / a different way of working together and lots of leadership, lots of travel money, etc. — and a government not trying to dismantle higher education.
Vance Maverick

If I’m understanding right, you’re saying that “All lawyers are not liars” means precisely “No lawyer is a liar”. True? (If not, what meaning are you saying is the right one?) What is the evidence for this interpretation?

It seems to me — speaking naively, as a mere user of the language — that the phrase can mean “Not all lawyers are liars”. As evidence, I adduce the fact that lots of people use it this way (even you admit that).

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jl25and3

The most common use of this construction is probably in advertising, where a special offer is said to be “not available in all areas.”

I’m torn on this one. It bugs me, because it’s just as easy to say what is actually meant: “not available in some areas.” At the same time, the meaning is not actually ambiguous; I know exactly what they are saying, and so does every other listener.

midevilprof

It’s where the “all” goes in these examples, if you ask me. It could be that “this is not available in all areas” is ambiguous. It is different from “in all areas this is not available”… isn’t it? In other words, I see your point, but because you’ve moved the “all”, you’ve created something like an orange to compare to the article’s apple.
marka

Well … not ‘all’ know what is meant. I’m a lawyer, and I’ve had many a contract case hinge on something like this.

Actually, much in our English language -can- be ambiguous. Just ask the lawyer on the other side of the matter! ;-)

altacharo

This particular construction has grated on my ears for years, ever since I was riding Amtrak on the NY-DC run and was forced to hear “all doors will not open” each time we stopped. It always put me in mind of a disaster movie, where none of the doors would open and the passengers would be seen through the windows, screaming for help. Sadly, I see the construction frequently. I even saw it in a NY Times article in the last week or so. It is one thing to be a stickler about matters that are largely aesthetic. I prefer to avoid using “however” to begin a sentence, but do not correct my students when they fail to match my taste. On the other hand, this construction is analytically flawed. It simply says something it does not intend to say. If we have all come to understand it, then the phrase is more akin to a Chinese character than a collection of words to be interpreted according to their grammar and syntax. I suppose some people couldn’t care less. Sadly, however, most would express it by saying “I could care less.” And therein lies this tale.

dank48

“I could care less” is down there with “going ballistic” and “quantum leap,” also used with meanings diametrically opposed to the original, generally by folks who can’t be bothered to pay attention to what they’re saying.

dank48

Off the subject, not that that’s a first, but for my money “irregardless” would probably occur in formal writing only in the work of the sort of S.F.B. cretin who can represent regional dialog only by means of pseudo-phonetic spellings like “likker,” “vittles,” and “britches.” (Ever notice that amateur attempts at dialect almost always choose only these three words to trot out as instances of ignorant speech, as if booze, food, and clothing were the only conversational topics of interest?) This actually illustrates only that the author is ignorant of the correct pronunciation of “liquor,” “victuals,” and “breeches” (= “pants”).

I count five “only”s in the above paragraph. Some of them could be repositioned, but only at the expense of meaning.

oldcommprof

I like dank. He posts only well thought out and well-written comments. If only I agreed with him every single time, but I only agree with him most of the time. The rest of the time the nits I pick are only minor. But that’s only rarely — and not this time.

dank48

Thanks. I’d be worried only about someone who agreed with me every single time, but not about someone who agreed with me only most of the time. Since I pick nits professionally, it says a lot about you that you can do the same for me.

http://twitter.com/realmagicdj DJ Weatherford

I consider both of these (“all are not” and “only”) “blinkers.” In speech, intonation helps us deliver the right meaning without a second thought; but in writing, that intonation is missing, and readers may have to rethink to get it. Moving the words a little just saves them that effort.

http://cardioblogy.blogspot.com/ Jens Fiederer

I agree – this is not so much a gaffe but an example of how our language is not as pure as some editors would like it to be. While both readings could be defended in a classroom, and one might be spoken as “All lawyers are NOT-liars” (the logical interpretation that no actual English speaker would hold aside from pedantry, trying to bind “not” and “liars” into a single element equivalent to “truthtellers”) and the other would be “ALL lawyers are not LIARS.”

Wishing that all semantic roles could be deduced purely from syntax does not make it so.

In computer languages we have parentheses to help group elements logically – maybe in the end English will be replaced by C# and eliminate this confusion, but I rather doubt it.

http://cardioblogy.blogspot.com/ Jens Fiederer

(Nevertheless, “Not all lawyers are liars” sounds far better to me.)

http://twitter.com/realmagicdj DJ Weatherford

Me, too.

epearlstein

And, of course “All that glitters is not gold.”

yandoodan

Only if you are Little Buttercup.

Otherwise, it’s “Not all that glitters is gold.”

jffoster

I don’t suppose it occurred to either the poster original or commenters to wonder whether any Linguistics research had been done on the scope of negation, the scope of quantifiers, how they interact, and why there might be dialect differences in the way they interact.
arrtist

As for your word-game, I prefer Shakespeare’s, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”.
Rule of Law my ass.