Bryan A. Garner

Write “you”-centered notes, not “I”-centered notes. In any short personal letter, try to ensure that “you” and “your” predominate over “I,” “me,” and “mine.” (Think of the sarcasm of the Beatles’ song “I Me Mine”—about self-centeredness.) Put yourself in the position of the recipient and consider how much better the second of these makes you …

LawProse Lesson #292: A secret for good personal notes. Read More »

Among the most useful devices in document design is the “hanging indent”—the device by which the second and following lines of an indented passage align with the first. The result: the set-off text becomes more prominent on the page. Hanging indents are useful with outlines and numbered, lettered, or bulleted lists. They’re especially useful in …

LawProse Lesson #291: The hanging indent. Read More »

How do you create a clean narrative line? Or a clean analytical line? Or a clean persuasive line? A compelling piece of writing contains no clutter, no distractions—nothing to sidetrack the reader. It marches forward in a clear progression of thought without ever tempting readers to rebel. The key unit of clean writing is the …

LawProse Lesson #290: The clean line in prose. Read More »

Shorter is not always better when it comes to summaries. You don’t want to say more than the occasion demands—but you don’t want to say less, either. Brevity without substance is worthless. So how do you write a concise, useful summary? An effective summary is focused, specific, and placed always at the beginning of your …

LawProse Lesson #289: The true meaning of “executive summary.” Read More »

Know what? You use is, are, was, and were more than any other verbs. You shrink from thinking of stronger verbs. You subconsciously besplatter your pages with inert verbs that squat or prostrate themselves. They do almost nothing. They occasionally flail, they swat at ideas, but mostly they just slumber. So if you want to …

LawProse Lesson #288: To Be or Not to Be. Read More »

Lawyers are so accustomed to their own verbosity that they have come to see the word verbiage as just another term for “wording.” In fact verbiage most commonly (and traditionally) connotes a gross surplus of words. (Note also that verbiage has three syllables, not two.) How bad is verbosity in legal writing? In a typical …

LawProse Lesson #287: The plague of wordiness. Read More »

Most schoolchildren are taught to start an outline with “I, II, III”—a quintessentially linear structure. But for many writers, this rote method leads to “outliner’s block”: the relative inability to produce a traditional outline. Most writers are familiar with the anxiety that facing an empty page can provoke. Not knowing where to begin a project, …

LawProse Lesson #286: Nonlinear outlining. Read More »

What’s the biggest mistake that legal writers make? It’s a simple blunder, really: too many begin writing before truly understanding the message they’re trying to communicate. They compose prematurely, hoping they’ll figure out the message along the way. Even if they do figure it out, their writing will inevitably be longer than necessary—both because it …

LawProse Lesson #285: The Biggest Mistake of Legal Writers. Read More »

Few things are more embarrassing for a professional writer or speaker than to use a wrong word. It’s like a professional musician’s hitting a wrong note. You reach into your mind for a word and end up grabbing the one next to it instead. Because the English language is so full of pairs or even …

LawProse Lesson #284: A short quiz on lexical distinctions. Read More »

It seems that in testing your mastery of capitalization last week, we made an error of our own. The quiz’s final question used the phrase “Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.” A number of you wrote in to say that it should be “Chief Justice of the United States.” And so it should. But that …

LawProse Lesson #283: Chief Justice of What? Read More »

Capitalization rules may seem like the stuff of grade school, but they can be surprisingly tricky. Sure, we all know to capitalize names, months, and days of the week—but what about titles? Or quotations? When is a noun actually a name, and when is it just a common noun? Quite often, it’s a matter of …

LawProse Lesson #282: A short capitalization quiz. Read More »

As a follow-up to our English-usage quiz from last week, here are 10 questions of common punctuation that can trip up even the most careful writers. Try your hand first and then check the answers at the end. Baker alleges that in multiple board meetings, Weirzman referred to her [(a) as, “that useless cow.”; (b) …

LawProse Lesson #281: A short punctuation quiz. Read More »

As a follow-up to our legal-usage quiz from last week, here are 10 questions of common English usage that can trip up even the most careful writers. Try your hand first and then check the answers at the end. Before we meet with the client, can you talk briefly with Margaret and [(a) I, (b) …

LawProse Lesson #280: A short English-usage quiz. Read More »

  Even the most fastidious lawyers can make blunders. Try your hand at these ten common examples of legal usage. Then check your answers at the end and see how well you did.   The court order awarded the plaintiff only 50% of its: [(a) attorneys’ fees, (b) attorneys fees, (c) attorney’s fees, (d) either …

LawProse Lesson #279: A short legal-usage quiz. Read More »

It’s truly astonishing just how often badly drafted provisions become enshrined in contractual forms—even those published as “models.” Just in the past week, my LawProse colleagues and I have come upon formbooks containing the following provisions. Can you spot the substantive problems? (1) “Within seven (7) days after the signing of this Agreement, Buyer agrees …

LawProse Lesson #278: Beware formbooks. Read More »

When editing a brief recently, I noticed that it alternated between the phrases noncompetition agreement and noncompete agreement—mostly using the latter. At various points the brief-writer even used noncompete as a noun, especially as in the plural form (e.g., the employees all signed noncompetes). Having ghostwritten a CLE paper on noncompetition agreements for a partner …

LawProse Lesson #277: “Noncompete” competes with “noncompetition” Read More »

Irregularities of any kind prove difficult for people—especially linguistic irregularities. They’re taxing on the long-term memory. For example, there are so many words ending in –cede (accede, intercede, precede, recede, secede) that the one exceptional spelling, supersede, is often misspelled to conform to the etymologically unrelated –cede words. It happens all the time. In print …

LawProse Lesson #276: Unusual Latin endings. Read More »

Some years ago, a federal appellate judge I interviewed said: “The brief had better have something interesting to say after page 20. If it doesn’t, my eyes start glazing over, and I’ll put it down.” It’s true of any piece of writing—and critical to effective advocacy: to have any hope of persuading your reader, you …

LawProse Lesson #275: Keeping the reader’s interest level high. Read More »

After you’ve chosen the perfect quotation from a case, statute, treatise, etc.—and deftly cut it to 49 or fewer words (as we discussed in Lesson # 273)—it’s time to tailor a lead-in that will effectively weave the quotation into the text. Some lawyers drop quotations into the text with no introduction at all. Others improve …

LawProse Lesson #274: Introducing quotations with an effective lead-in. Read More »