LawProse Lessons

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

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

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

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

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)

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)

  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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bluebook (Rule 5.1(a)(i)) requires that all quotations exceeding 49 words must be set off from the text as “block quotations.” In lawyers’ briefs, these are usually single spaced, unlike the rest of the text. In journals and books, block quotations are commonly set in a smaller typeset. All this is well known, as is

Last week, we addressed the legal writer’s bad habit of emphasizing words by using unsightly and outdated underlining. The better substitute for highlighting specific words or short phrases is italics. Yet there’s a syntactic practice that can be even more effective and forceful: ending your sentences emphatically. Skilled writers know that the most emphatic position

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

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

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

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.