LawProse Lessons

What are the rules on initial capitals? ANSWER: Most of the first letters of words in the titles of books, articles, songs, etc. are capitalized. The exceptions are articles or prepositions of four or fewer letters (unless they begin the title). So The Great Escape and Much Ado About Nothing, but Hope Is the Thing with […]

What are the rules on indenting? ANSWER: The first rule of indenting is to change your word-processor’s default tab setting. Half-inch tabs are a sure sign of a dysfunctional layout. They jump out at you as soon as you pick up a document and see “A.” half an inch from the left margin, followed by

What’s wrong with underlining in briefs, contracts, and other legal documents? ANSWER: Underlining is a holdover from the era of typewriters. It’s crude and unsightly. Why else would you recoil from a published book that contained underlining? Admit it: you would. Any publisher that typeset a book with underlining would seem like a fly-by-night operation.

Why is The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White, at once so revered and so reviled? Some 52 years on, America’s favorite “little book” on style has become a source of controversy. It’s a primer–an excellent but extremely elementary book. Part of the negative attention it gets is based on the way some people

What’s the LawProse Effective Writing Index? It’s a scale to gauge the ten most important attributes of analytical and persuasive writing. The Index — forgive us, but we use the acronym LEWI (pronounced “louie”) — measures clarity, readability, efficiency, flow, tone, and mechanics. When different lawyer-editors at LawProse independently measured various pieces of writing, the

What is the most frequent error involving the semicolon? ANSWER: Placing it after a salutation in a letter, as in “Dear Lon Fuller; . . . .” That is worse than semiliterate: it is a barbarism. Only two punctuation marks are allowable after a salutation: the colon (in formal business letters) and the comma (in

Lesson # 81 Does the new Scalia-Garner treatise take a position on the serial comma — that is, the one preceding “and” in the phrase “a, b, and c”? ANSWER: Yes, in Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, Justice Scalia and Bryan Garner explain the Punctuation Canon. In the course of that section, they

Lesson # 79 Why does Bryan Garner recommend deleting shall from all legal instruments? ANSWER: Several reasons: (1) It is the most frequently litigated word in the English language. (2) Not 1 lawyer in 100 uses it consistently in mandatory senses. (3) In most contracts, it bears three or four meanings — thereby violating the

Lesson # 77 What’s the easiest way to resolve a debate about any punctuation issue? ANSWER: Look at two authoritative sources: The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style ch. 1 (2d ed. 2006) (with 50 pages devoted to punctuation) and The Chicago Manual of Style ch. 6 (16th ed. 2011) (with 43 pages devoted to

Lesson # 75 What’s the most eye-opening lesson that lawyers learn at LawProse seminars? ANSWER: There are many eye-openers, but the biggest is probably that writing style matters much more than most legal writers suspect. It is the wand that turns good ideas into gold. And just as you know the quality of a musician

Lesson # 73 What is the biggest mistake that lawyers make in the writing process? ANSWER: Starting to write before they’ve figured out precisely what the message is. As a result, the writing tends to be long-winded, meandering, repetitious, and unfocused. For tips on adopting a sensible method for writing, see these sources: Garner on

Lesson # 71 What is the most astonishing usage error committed by a majority of lawyers?ANSWER: Misunderstanding that the phrase just deserts (/di-ZURTS/) is so spelled — as opposed to the erroneous *just desserts. This word desert (pronounced, we reiterate, /di-ZURT/) is the noun corresponding to deserve. The Supreme Court of the United States has used the

LawProse Lesson #67 What’s the most frequent and serious mistake in brief-writing and motion-writing? Answer: Failing to frame the deep issues on page 1 — so that anyone, anyone, will understand the essential legal problems to be solved. It should be a dispassionate but persuasive statement of the issues. For instruction on precisely how to

LawProse Lesson #69 How should point headings be formatted?ANSWER: Please attend to this. Ideally, they’re complete sentences that are single-spaced, boldfaced, and capitalized only according to normal rules of capitalization — that is, neither all-caps nor initial caps. Even if court rules require headings to be double-spaced, all the other rules nevertheless apply. All-caps headings betoken