36 A Preliminary Diction Study woman because she will always fall within this broad exception to the rule. In fact, that is the overarching question when dealing with statutory construction and phrasing exceptions to exceptions to the general rule: how do you qualify enough so that all the rights are carefully calibrated in relation to others, without slipping into the tendency of using words that are too ambiguous or general that they become weightless in the face of the law? How do you disclaim enough without amounting to a circuitous and almost toothless law? Legislation has not found it an easy task to walk this tensioned line between over-generalization and over-specification, but to not contend with the actually balance that must be struck will more gravely amount to a law may allow it to be subjected to the whims, legalmaneuvering and creative and interpretative imaginations of those who seek to tailor-fit the law to a vast variety of conflicting interests. It is true that legislative writing has a long and well-established tradition and the style of legal documents has become firmly standardized, with the inevitable result that drafters may tend to become comfortable with the tried, tested, time-honored and formulaic linguistic expressions and the style of writing over a period of time. This should be an important point that drafters and legal scholars may well give close attention to, since legislative writing is a right-conferring and/or obligation-imposing writing activity. In general, the Magna Carta of Women does stand faithful to the goal of achieving not a reverse dominance of women over men, but equality and equity for all, regardless of gender. In the fine, it does have provisions and clauses that are not as accurately phrased, so that they open up crevices for repression, oppression, abuse and misuse to seep into the otherwise watertight gender-equality law. This paper does not seek to insist that the final draft of the Magna Carta of Women is weak and unhelpful. It does propose that a closer study at the language of the law should be done in order to scrutinize and see whether the words employed actually embody the ideas they ought to contain. Rights and duties are bestowed and taken away with just words in the written law. So that more often than not, in constitutional case battles, the fight between clients and their opposing counsels boil down to a war of semantics. Now, if words used in laws are not carefully chosen and deliberately reviewed, and they do not stand exactly and truthfully for the spirit of the law which they seek to convey, then nothing will stop anyone from performing semantic gymnastics over, beyond and between the lines of the provisions, so that the law is summarily rendered useless and empty – a mere scrap of paper.