Bryan A. Garner

Lawyers have spent decades trying to achieve emphasis in legal documents by underlining. It’s well past time to stop. Underlining is an unsightly relic from the typewriter era, when italics weren’t usually available. With today’s word processors, there’s no reason to use it—at least not 99% of the time. If you’ve read documents with underlined …

LawProse Lesson #271: Ban underlining in your legal documents. Read More »

An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that further describes or identifies another noun or noun phrase that immediately precedes it. Take this sentence: “Travis Barnhill, the company’s CEO, spoke to the media about the merger.” The phrase the company’s CEO is an appositive of the proper noun Travis Barnhill. Or this: “The dog …

LawProse Lesson #270: A refresher on appositives. Read More »

Average sentence length. What’s recommended? An average sentence length of 20 words. That doesn’t mean that every sentence needs to be 20 words long. You want some longer sentences (well put together, naturally) and some shorter ones (perhaps two or three words). But your average ought to be around 20. John Trimble, the renowned University …

LawProse Lesson #269: Average sentence length. Read More »

Can you think of a common two-word Latin phrase that gets solidified in its abbreviated form? You might cite per centum (per 100) vs. percent—and that’s a fair answer. But perhaps the strangest is et cetera, which becomes etc. (= and other things). The old-fashioned form of it, predominant from 1700 to 1850, is &c. …

LawProse Lesson #268: The two-word Latinism making a solid abbreviation. Read More »

The phrase law of the case is often misunderstood. Properly, it denotes a common-law doctrine that applies most often to cases that have been appealed. When an appellate court makes a final decision in a case, that decision is binding in a later appeal after remand. The decision becomes the law of that case. For …

LawProse Lesson #267: Law of the case. Read More »

What are the primary hallmarks of lazy, mediocre (or worse) legal writers? Pages filled with citations and block quotations. Today we’ll focus just on the latter. The Bluebook says that any quotation of more than 50 words must be set off in a block. The Chicago Manual of Style suggests that a quotation of 100 …

LawProse Lesson #266: The plague of block quotations Read More »

People often ask why it matters what precise word you use (militate vs. mitigate, or masterly vs. masterful) as long as readers or listeners understand what you mean. If there’s no real confusion, they say, why should we get persnickety about words? This view is premised on the pragmatic idea that language is all about …

LawProse Lesson #265: Intelligibility vs. Credibility. Read More »

What’s the most important step in writing a statement of facts? It’s the creation of a chronology of relevant events—a document that lists, day by day and time by time, every important occurrence bearing on the interactions between parties. Lawyers often ask clients to prepare such a chronology as a starting point. Although the quality …

LawProse Lesson #264: The chronology of relevant events. Read More »

A few years ago, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote to complain about the use of such that in place of so that: “Annihilate it!” he told me. “It’s pervasive among lawyers today.” It is an odd usage that I recall having first encountered in high-school geometry {Let a distance CB be taken on the conjugate axis, …

LawProse Lesson #263: The “such that” lesson. Read More »

What’s the plural of attorney general? The answer is attorneys general, not *attorney generals. (The asterisk signifies an always-erroneous form.) A federal judge in New York recently tried to defend his use of the incorrect plural, likening it to brigadier generals. But the analogy is misbegotten: brigadier general denotes a type of military general—and general …

LawProse Lesson #262: The plural of “attorney general.” Read More »

Most professional writing (the type you see in major newsmagazines) is tight; most legal writing isn’t. You want a tip on tightening? After you have a fairly polished draft, look at the last line, half-line, or quarter-line of every paragraph. Play with the paragraph to try to shorten it by one line. It’s a little …

LawProse Lesson #261: Tinkering for tightening. Read More »

Acronyms and Initialisms. Legal writers are addicted to defined terms, especially shorthand forms made of initials. (An acronym is sounded as a word [UNESCO], while an initialism is pronounced letter by letter [HMO].) Although abbreviations are highly convenient, it’s a false sense of convenience: they benefit the writer but burden the reader—unless they’re already extremely …

LawProse Lesson #260: Acronyms and Initialisms. Read More »

The phrase amicus curiae and its shortened form amicus raise several tricky linguistic questions. How are they pluralized? How are the singular and plural forms pronounced? What’s the preferred singular possessive form? Should the phrase be italicized? How often is the translation friend of the court used by comparison? What’s the history of the phrase …

LawProse Lesson #259: Friendly banter about “amicus.” Read More »

What’s the plural of Evans? You have some friends, Bob and Sally Evans. As a couple, they are the __________. (How do you pluralize their last name?) Sometimes, you go to their house: that’s called the __________ house. (Can you make the plural possessive?) There, you see Bob __________ coin collection. (Make the singular possessive.) …

LawProse Lesson #258: What’s the plural of Evans? Read More »

Statutes and Judicial Opinions: When, in Time, Do They Begin and End? In the Beginning. The traditional view is that statutes are prospective only, but judicial opinions operate retroactively. That’s because ex post facto laws are thought to be fundamentally unfair, and judicial opinions normally declare what the law is—as opposed to making it. This …

LawProse Lesson #257: Statutes and Judicial Opinions Read More »

Strategies with Names. Is it true that in a brief, you should use your client’s name for personalization and call your opponent by a legal label (e.g. “defendant”) for depersonalization? No—almost never. This “advice” is almost invariably unsound. Would it be better to call Cruella De Ville “Antagonist”? No: she’s memorably Cruella. Bad facts about …

LawProse Lesson #256: Strategies with Names. Read More »

Admittedly, the traditional conjugations are more blurred than ever. Mastering them has proved difficult for people. Nevertheless, here goes. Lay is a transitive verb—that is, it demands a direct object {lay your pencils down}. It is inflected lay–laid–laid {I laid the book there yesterday} {these rumors have been laid to rest}. (The children’s prayer Now …

LawProse Lesson #255: Lay vs. lie. Read More »

Persuasion is a complicated product of successful conscious and unconscious effects. As a brief-writer, your goal is to persuade the judge to rule in your client’s favor. Generally, to achieve this, you must do four things: 1. Get the judge’s attention. Don’t let your brief be one of those dense, befuddling aggregates of facts, law, …

LawProse Lesson #254: The four necessities of brief-writing. Read More »

If lawyers could remember to avoid just five common mispronunciations, what would they be? These are the words: applicable comparable often realtor substantive Say them aloud. Then see whether you used the preferable (PREF-uh-ruh-buhl) pronunciations: applicable (accent on the first syllable, not the second) comparable (same) often (silent t) realtor (two syllables, not three) substantive …

LawProse Lesson #253: Commonly mispronounced words. Read More »

What’s new in The Winning Brief? Three things. First, it’s being offered as a 10-part webinar series for the first time this summer. If you care about persuasive writing, you won’t want to miss it. Second, the third edition has all the substance from the first two editions, plus nine entirely new sections (including “understanding your …

LawProse Lesson #252: What’s new in “The Winning Brief”? Read More »