Bylaw content

[Clay Rembert]

Hello!

I sincerely trust that you are safely navigating your way through this current pandemic successfully!  Question; In your experience, how often have you seen things such as tables and diagrams included in the bylaws of an assembly?  Thanks in advance!

 

Clay

[Gary Novosielski]

It would be rare, but I can imagine situations where it might make sense.  There's no rule against it.

[Shmuel Gerber]

On 7/10/2020 at 8:18 PM, ClayRembert said:

Hello!

I sincerely trust that you are safely navigating your way through this current pandemic successfully!  Question; In your experience, how often have you seen things such as tables and diagrams included in the bylaws of an assembly?  Thanks in advance!

 

Clay

Well, I've seen tables of contents in bylaws.  However, I think those would probably be considered secretarial notations and not part of the actual bylaws.

You may be interested to know that the New York City Traffic Rules contain the diagrams below to accompany the rule «Where parking is prohibited by signs, but not
where stopping or standing is prohibited, a duly licensed physician or dentist may park his/her motor vehicle, identified by "MD," "OP" or "DDS" New York registration plates, on a roadway adjacent to hospitals or clinics for a period not to exceed three hours. For the purposes of this paragraph, only those portions of a roadway corresponding to the shaded areas on the diagrams below shall be considered adjacent to a hospital or clinic. At other locations where parking is prohibited by signs, but not where stopping or standing is prohibited, a duly licensed physician may park his/her motor vehicle, identified by "MD" or "OP" New York registration plates, for a period not to exceed one hour while actually attending to a patient in the immediate vicinity.»

If you're an out-of-town doctor, or if you need more than an hour to treat a patient and are parked in a no-parking zone (or, heaven forfend, in a no-standing or no-stopping zone) around the corner from a hospital that doesn't extend all the way to the corner of the block, or if you haven't memorized the 135-page book of traffic rules (which, to be fair, includes a 12-page table of contents and an 8-page index and, to be fair, is in any event no more than one-sixth the size of RONR and, to be fair, also includes this nifty map of the Central Park transverse roads and "hack stand" areas as well as some other diagrams), I suppose you might be out of luck and find a citation on your windshield when you get back. (And your windshield might be in the tow pound, although it will probably still be attached to the car, so you're not totally out of luck.)

[Clay Rembert]

Outstanding...thanks!

[Rob Elsman]

I am having difficulty understanding why an organization would not want to set out its rules in words, sentences, paragraphs, and so forth.  Tables and diagrams are usually reserved for explanatory materials.  Take RONR, for example.  The various lists, diagrams, and tables in the back of the book are useful for quick reference, but I would not think of them as the prima facie exposition of the rules, themselves.

 

[Atul Kapur]

Because, as in Mr. Gerber's example of NYC hospital-adjacent parking, a picture can save a thousand words, at least.

[Richard Brown]

On 7/12/2020 at 4:49 PM, Atul Kapur said:

Because, as in Mr. Gerber's example of NYC hospital-adjacent parking, a picture can save a thousand words, at least.

Sometimes, as in the case of this post by Dr. Kapur and the post above by Shmuel Gerber, I wish that this forum had a “Like” button! 🙂

[Gary Novosielski]

5 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

Sometimes, as in the case of this post by Dr. Kapur and the post above by Shmuel Gerber, I wish that this forum had a “Like” button! 🙂

👍

[AFS1970]

Not quite a table or diagram, but in the bylaws revision I am a part of, we are formatting several areas as a list of bullet points instead of a paragraph. It will make the total document a few more pages but hopefully make them easier to reference. 

[Gary Novosielski]

3 hours ago, AFS1970 said:

Not quite a table or diagram, but in the bylaws revision I am a part of, we are formatting several areas as a list of bullet points instead of a paragraph. It will make the total document a few more pages but hopefully make them easier to reference. 

Lists of bullet points can introduce ambiguities, such as not clearly specifying whether all the points on the list apply, or whether any one of the points will suffice.  

[AFS1970]

On 7/14/2020 at 9:12 PM, Gary Novosielski said:

Lists of bullet points can introduce ambiguities, such as not clearly specifying whether all the points on the list apply, or whether any one of the points will suffice.

In our case we had some sections that were bullet points and some that were paragraphs. We had to pick one format or the other.

[Atul Kapur]

On 7/14/2020 at 9:12 PM, Gary Novosielski said:

Lists of bullet points can introduce ambiguities, such as not clearly specifying whether all the points on the list apply, or whether any one of the points will suffice.  

Yes, they can, but I think that it is easier to make bullet points clear and unambiguous than long lists in paragraph form.

For example I think that in the Oakhurst Dairy / Oxford comma case that the use of bullet points or a numbered list would have avoided a costly lawsuit.

[Joshua Katz]

1 hour ago, Atul Kapur said:

For example I think that in the Oakhurst Dairy / Oxford comma case that the use of bullet points or a numbered list would have avoided a costly lawsuit.

Not to mention the earlier capital punishment case that turned on a comma.