LawProse Lessons

Last week, we discussed the “cleaned-up” quotation. Continuing our series on quotations, we should look at how—and why—to be as concise as possible. Effective legal writers make every quotation as succinct as possible, ruthlessly omitting everything but the pith of what’s needed. Quotations play mere supporting roles in your argument, even if they’re from the […]

Last week, we discussed the circumstances in which it’s permissible to tacitly change a quotation to regularize it to house style. This week, we’ll discuss another type of cosmetic alteration, something like a bibliographic face-lift: the “cleaned-up” quotation. In recent years, some legal writers have become so obsessed with noting every little bibliographic detail—for example,

Is it ever permissible to fix a trivial mistake in a quotation without noting it in your citation? Less so in legal writing than in other types—as most legal writers would insist. Some nonlegal style manuals do allow writers to silently correct obvious errors such as missing periods, unclosed parentheses, or misspellings. For example, The

Here’s our final “final” installment in this series of anomalies of spelling. amble but ambulate annual but biennial armorial but armoire Cambridge but Cantabrigian circumstance but circumstantial crustacean but patrician enforce but reinforce enviable but permeable epicurean but millenarian evidence but evidentiary fisc but bosk float but flotation Glasgow but Glaswegian grisly but gristly inequitable

As we’ve seen over the last three LawProse lessons, English orthography is riddled with exceptions—ones that you should memorize or at least recognize as irregular. Here’s our final installment in this series of four. ascendable but descendible bombast but lambaste candle but candelabra comrade but camaraderie curious but curiosity dexterous but ambidextrous embarrass but harass

As we’ve seen over the last two LawProse lessons, English orthography is riddled with anomalous exceptions to what seem, by analogy, to be norms. A great example is idiosyncrasy, the only English word ending –crasy (as befits the sense of the term). All the words having to do with governmental forms (aristocracy, democracy, ochlocracy, plutocracy,

Our last LawProse Lesson, on oddities of English spelling, sparked many e-mails suggesting additional candidates. Remember that there needn’t be an etymological association between the confusable words (although there often is). For present purposes, an appearance suggesting an orthographical association is enough to cause problems for people: archaeology but genealogy beautician but dietitian comme il

English orthography, or spelling, is riddled with challenges. Because English speakers have plundered the vocabularies of so many different languages, English words have no common etymology. This diversity of origin has led to words that depart from patterns, or even adopting a source language’s grammatical patterns that are indiscernible to English-language monoglots. Take, for example,

A learned correspondent of ours, Michael Eshleman, is the county attorney for Otero County, New Mexico. A member of both the New Mexico bar and the Ohio bar, he tells us that the New Mexico admission certificate calls him an “attorney and counsellor at law.” But the Ohio admission certificate calls him an “attorney and

Unheralded shifts in voice are a common fault in quoting, as when the writer quotes a first-person reference (direct discourse) within a third-person passage (indirect discourse). Here’s a clear example of direct discourse: “The judge declared: ‘I see no genuine issues of material fact.’” And here’s indirect discourse: “The judge declared that she saw no

What’s in a Name (or Label or Designation)? In the past few decades, an unfortunate habit has formed within a substantial segment of lawyerdom: giving parties alternative shorthand names. A brief-writer will mention Harold Reynolds and then add, parenthetically, “(Reynolds or Plaintiff)”; a contract-drafter, in a preamble, will write “SFX Corporation” and then add, parenthetically,

The English-language has so many homophones (sound-alike words) and near-homophones that it’s hard for people to keep them straight. Let me illustrate with a fictitious paragraph: You know I have a photogenic memory. After Easter observations a couple of years ago, I was at the church bizarre when I overheard someone making laudable remarks about

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

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

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

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

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

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

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,

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