In the United
States alone, over one-hundred million adults have a credit card. One of the
most popular banks across the United States is Bank of America. Bank of America
is worth trillions of dollars, a significant portion of which comes from
interest and fees associated with credit card accounts. When someone signs up
for a credit card, it is standard for a credit card agreement to be signed. A
credit card agreement is supposed to outline term, conditions, penalties, and
charges associated with using a credit card. Credit card agreements differ from
one bank to another, but certain information is required to be considered
legally sound. However, how this information is presented might cause problems
for many Americans looking to get a credit card.
When a bank needs to convey
a large amount of legal information, the official style as coined by Richard
Lanham tends to be used. For the bank, the usage of the official style could
potentially be viewed as necessary as a means of ensuring that all pertinent
information is included. However, this can have a negative effect on the
consumer attempting to get a credit card. For the example credit card agreement
for Bank of America® Platinum Plus® and
Classic Visa® and MasterCard® accounts, and World MasterCard® accounts that was
chosen for this analyzation, the average grade level necessary to comprehend
the document according to the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readability Formula is
18.7. When taking into account that the average American reads at a seventh-grade
level, a discrepancy between written information and actual comprehension
becomes evident.
The Bank of America example credit card agreement utilizes the official
style in a variety of ways. Most significantly, jargon from within the field
and legalese are used widely throughout the document. For example, in a
description of interest rates, the credit card agreement states:
Clearly, this portion of
the document has heavy usage of terms that are not familiar to most Americans
without some form of knowledge about banks and credit. The average American
individual, maintaining a seventh-grade reading comprehension level, would
likely not be educated about terms such as Balances Subject to an Interest Rate
for Purchases, DPR, Interest Rate for Balance Transfers, Pre-Cycle Balance,
among others. When terms such as these are included in somewhat vague and
extremely complex sentences that are already difficult to comprehend, it
becomes unclear to the average consumer how this important aspect of the credit
card might work.
Beyond this, the Bank of
America example credit card agreement contains many more extremely long and
complex sentences. One example includes:
Not only are each of these
sentences extremely long, they each contain multiple ideas per sentence. For example, the first sentence uses multiple appositives, a relative clause, and multiple prepositional phrases to name a few. Several complete thoughts are combined into one extremely long, complex, and confusing sentence. Relative clauses continue to be used heavily throughout the rest of the document. This allows multiple ideas to be presented in a single, very long sentence rather than broken up into multiple shorter, easier-to-digest sentences. The punctuation chosen for this document
illustrates the official style as well, including many commas and semi-colons
to separate the multiple clauses within each sentence. Passive voice is evident
throughout the document, causing it to appear impersonal and disconnecting the
reader, especially when coupled with the jargonistic language and highly
elevated diction chosen. Similarly, there are no sub-headings or other attempts
to separate different ideas for easier comprehension. It is likely that when
someone encounters a passage this long with such comprehensive sentences, they
will not read it closely.
When analyzing the official
style as evidenced in this Bank of America Credit Card Agreement, one begins to
question the reasoning behind the chosen style. On one hand, it is clearly necessary
for the bank to include certain information, which could require some usage of
jargonistic language and legal terms. However, usage of the official style in a
credit card agreement could signify something more negative or sinister. It is
likely that banks, most significantly the legal team who drafts the credit card
agreements, are aware that most consumers are unable to understand the
agreement they are signing. Taking this into consideration, it could be assumed
that banks intentionally make credit card agreements unclear and difficult to
comprehend as a means of ensuring that more people sign up for and use credit
cards. When documents and contracts are lengthy and difficult to understand, it
is more likely that people will simply not read them and just sign despite an
unawareness of the terms of the agreement. Data from the Federal Reserve has
revealed that credit card debt in America has reached over $1 trillion in 2017.
So, it can be assumed that popular banks such as Bank of America make millions
of dollars off credit card usage, debt, and interest. For this reason, it
appears that banks would not have a major enough incentive to draft credit card
agreements that would make sense to a greater portion of the American
population. They are benefiting from so many people not understanding what
they are agreeing to and potentially unknowingly misusing their credit cards,
resulting in more charges, debt, and interest to be collected by the bank. For
ethical reasons, it could be argued that banks should simplify credit card
agreements so consumers can understand exactly what they are getting themselves
into when signing their names, possibly saving millions of Americans from
unmanageable debt and associated difficulties.
Sydney M.
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