Rule reminder

Being able to decode formal Italian into plain language is as important as producing it. Bureaucratic Italian is notoriously dense — 'si comunica che l'istanza di cui al punto 3 dell'allegato A risulta non ammissibile' simply means 'the application mentioned in point 3 of Appendix A is not accepted'. Key decoding skills: recognise nominalised verbs (istanza = application, adempimento = fulfilling an obligation), legal formulas (di cui = referred to in), and bureaucratic circumlocutions (risulta non ammissibile = is not accepted).