LawProse Lessons

Can you recommend a good book on writing? We’re often asked this broadly phrased question. But because “writing” is such a broad subject, what one person needs isn’t the same as what someone else would find most helpful. If the question relates to grammar and usage—the thousand nitty-gritty issues of English wording—it’s hard to beat Garner’s Modern …

LawProse Lesson #417: A good book on writing Read More »

You sometimes hear that writing “can’t be taught.” The statement has some truth in it: because writing is a complex integration of thought and technique, no teacher can supervise you while you do it. As a field of practical application, it requires doing. Only when you actually write can you apply whatever theories you might …

LawProse Lesson #416: Writing Can’t Be Taught Read More »

What happens when you write a good letter, memo, motion, or brief within a reasonable time according to your skill level—one that suits both your purposes and your reader’s? You rely on stored knowledge that you’ve made automatic. Without trying, you’ve blended the powers of your subconscious and conscious minds. The subconscious part is the …

LawProse Lesson #415: Your Subconscious Competence Read More »

A traditional daily newspaper contains about 150,000 words—meaning that the journalists produce the equivalent of a 250-page book every 24 hours. They uniformly follow a style manual to ensure consistency in writing.          Most law offices of 50–75 lawyers produce that much work every workday as well. Like good journalists, they insist on accuracy …

LawProse Lesson #414: Why a legal style manual? Read More »

You’ve read thousands of pieces of writing. You may even have produced thousands—in which case you probably have strong likes and dislikes about myriad aspects of writing. At times, you may feel as if you’ve reached your limits as a writer, that you have little if anything left to learn about the subject. Well, it’s …

LawProse Lesson #413: Learning to enjoy writing Read More »

People commonly write for any of six reasons: (1) to express themselves, (2) to inform others, (3) to explain things, (4) to criticize, (5) to argue a point, and (6) to entertain. Nos. 2–5 all have a necessary place in persuasion, and no. 6 (at a subdued level) is a definite plus.           To persuade, you …

LawProse Lesson #412: How writing persuades Read More »

Let’s say an undergraduate professor once assigned you to write a critical report on a recently published book. You were expected to read it closely and to consult additional sources, such as related publications and book reviews. Your professor made several assumptions about your capabilities: that you could read and understand college-level materials;that you could …

LawProse Lesson #411: What professors and judges have in common? Read More »

Last time, we promised a treatment of editing vs. proofreading. Both involve improving a draft, but there are major differences. There are even two types of editing: macro-editing (reorganizing sections, supplying new text, etc.) and line-editing (making sentence-level improvements, such as enhancing word choices and rewording sentences so that, to the extent possible, each one …

LawProse Lesson #410: Editing vs. Proofreading Read More »

Whatever their level of competence, revisers can make only three types of alterations: delete, replace, and insert. Any of these should improve a piece, not detract from it.   Deletions involve removing whatever is unhelpful, whether superfluous words (June of 2022 becomes June 2022), redundancies (general consensus becomes consensus), undesirable repetitions (often resulting from inexpert phrasing), and even weak arguments. Yes, sometimes …

LawProse Lesson #409: The Kinds of Editorial Changes Read More »

Bryan A. Garner, the founder of LawProse, has devoted his National Review column (“Garner the Grammarian”) to why American judges so frequently cite dictionaries and grammars. You’ll find it here: https://rb.gy/3vlma. The magazine editors have kindly dropped their paywall for a limited time so you can access this.         If you’re not already …

LawProse Lesson #409 Why Judges Cite Dictionaries Read More »

“I’m ready for my public now,” the late Dame Edna Everage used to say. Less jokingly, a writer might say, “I’m ready for my readers now.”          But what does the writer’s statement mean? It means that, as a writer, you have an ever-present awareness of your audience. It’s a matter of psychological preparation. If you …

LawProse Lesson #408 The Importance of a Writer’s Audience Read More »

Writing is a basic skill, especially in law. And so those of you who read last month in The New Yorker that humanities majors are declining precipitously in universities everywhere might have been alarmed. In the past decade, English majors have fallen by half in many if not most universities. At Harvard, the dean of …

LawProse Lesson #407 The Troubling Decline of the Humanities Read More »

As an editor or self-editor, you’re essentially a physician treating a patient (the composition). You must be a good diagnostician, and you must know the best possible treatments. Is the problem a superficial condition akin to slight bruising, or is it something so serious as to require resuscitation and intensive care?           To treat the sick, …

LawProse Lesson #406 You as Editor/Physician Read More »

Professional writers know that they’ve had to abandon various “school rules” to become successful. They’ve had to unlearn the untruths that seemingly all writers pick up along the way. (A prime example is the idea that you should never write a one-sentence paragraph.) A renegade writer rejects superstitions. The important thing is to know which …

LawProse Lesson #405 Renegade Writers Read More »

One common problem that legal writers have is plunging into sections of a project before developing a good sense of the whole. Imagine building parts of a house before having an architectural plan. A superb technique for team writing projects is to have every member individually prepare point headings—full-sentence propositions. These team members must be …

LawProse Lesson #404 Seeing the Forest Read More »

In 1943, Robert Graves and Alan Hodge wrote a classic book on English prose: The Reader over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose. It has stayed in print ever since, enjoying a particular upsurge in sales when re-released in the late 1970s. In their opening chapter, Graves and Hodge focus on a …

LawProse Lesson #403 The Reader over Your Shoulder Read More »

It was Samuel Goldwyn, the film producer, who said that a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. This witticism depends on our understanding the word verbal as equivalent to oral (or spoken). But is it? The most traditional meaning of verbal is “having to do with words.” If that’s so, then even …

LawProse Lesson #402 Verbal Contracts Read More »

A highly effective piece of writing—this includes legal writing—uses the resources of language so efficiently that readers are unconscious of manner and become aware only of matter. With a brief or motion, judicial readers readily perceive the argument, and the basis for it, without ever being baffled—and without even thinking that they’re reading an argument. …

LawProse Lesson #401 The Art that Conceals Art Read More »

From elementary-school days, people learn—and should continue learning—how to write forceful and grammatically correct sentences. If you have this skill, you have a good start on writing well. But there’s much more to it. You must cultivate the skill of combining sentences into logically coherent paragraphs. By way of analogy, paragraphs are to sentences what …

LawProse Lesson #400: So what’s a paragraph? Read More »

How is it done? You must study good models, practice steadily, and learn to develop and support suitable arguments. The whole point of schooling—of the weary grind in learning certain things by rote (whether a foreign language, English grammar, or the multiplication tables of old)—isn’t to acquire facts but instead to train your mind to …

LawProse Lesson #399: The way to learn to write. Read More »