In many contracts, the same term happens to be used in both the singular and plural form. The typical example is term “Party”, which is also used as “Parties”.
The question arises whether, in ClauseBase, you should create two different Concepts in such situation.
- For grammatical purposes, it is not necessary to create two different Concepts for the same term. After all, assuming you have specified both the singular and the plural form in the concept label of the Concept, the special functions
@singularand@pluralallow you to easily different between the two grammatical forms. - From a legal perspective, it may be the case that you want to either assign a different meaning to the singular and plural form, or at least explicitly clarify how the singular and plural form should be interpreted. (E.g., in contracts with more than two parties, it may be ambiguous whether “the Parties” refers to “at least two parties (but not necessarily all of them)” or instead to “all of the parties”.)
In such case, many legal experts will insert two different entries in the definition list, one for the singular form and one for the plural form.
If you happen to find yourself in this situation, you will indeed have to create two different Concepts. The reason is that if you create only one Concept, and force its singular or plural form through@singularand@plural, then ClauseBase will only insert one entry into the definition list. You will probably want to ensure that the default concept label for the singular Concept is the singular form of the term, while the default concept label for the plural Concept is the plural form of the term