The narrator in "Blackbird Pie" feels duped by the letter that purports to be from his wife - the words seem familiar, no one else could have written them or slipped them under his door, but the handwriting is not. This is clearly more than a letter - by its manner of transmission it functions predominantly as a signal of the end of a relationship, and the narrator's failure to recognise the handwriting is a powerful symbol of the performative meaning of the letter. Similarly, the legal context in which the language of a statute appears - a context in which language takes on a performative role - has a transforming effect on the meaning of the language.

Second distortion - multiple readings; single text. The fruitful striving of the plain language project to seek new ways of drafting legislation so it may communicate effectively to individuals comes up against a limit due to the peculiar and complex transmission system of legislation.

Plain language style for both legal and other official documents aspires to the intimacy of private correspondence. Thus the proposal to consider the use of the intimate address of "you" in this context. Plain language documents seek to "write the name of their readers on the outside of their envelopes", like that in which the letter is delivered to Carver's narrator. (It is interesting to note at this point that Carver gives no name to his narrator throughout the story.)

The problem for legislation in particular is that the actual communication model for law is one: many, not one: one. This results in a double bind I feel every day as I attempt to draft legislation "for the readers", caught between a rock and a hard place:

• the statute I am drafting is legion: it must apply in multiple reading contexts, many of which I need to predict in advance (hard enough in itself, even harder to draft for)