LawProse Lesson #381: How to write an effective report.

Collect all relevant information, facts, and illustrations.Draft a key sentence—a full sentence—stating your main objectives.Make a list of all major and minor subject headings. Then turn these into full sentences so that you have a propositional outline. Rearrange propositions as necessary.Draft the body of the report as quickly as possible, composing paragraphs in support of …

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LawProse Lesson #379: Seven Questions to Ask When Revising

Have you been utterly truthful?Have you said all you need to say?Have you been appropriately diplomatic and fair?In your opener, have you made your points quickly and clearly?Have you avoided a slow wind-up that unnecessarily postpones the message?In the middle, have you proved your points with specifics?Is the closer fresh-sounding but consistent with what precedes …

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LawProse Lesson 377: Where? The Jenningses’ house or the Reynoldses’ house?

You have friends named Jennings and Reynolds—the Jennings family and the Reynolds family, also known as the Jenningses and the Reynoldses. (Those are the only grammatical plurals for those names.) A large group is having a get-together at the Jenningses’ house. Or is it at the Reynoldses’ house? Either way, it’ll be delightful. Last week, …

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LawProse Lesson 375: Lawyers’ Contributions to the English Language

Few realize just how important lawyers have been to English-language studies. The first English-language dictionary (John Rastell, 1523) was by a lawyer—a law dictionary that antedated the first general dictionary (Robert Cawdrey, 1604) by 81 years. The first dictionaries to cite authorities and stress etymology were likewise by a lawyer (Thomas Blount, 1656, 1670). That …

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LawProse Lesson 370: Justice Breyer on the Judiciary

In September 2021, in the Wall Street Journal, LawProse founder and leader Bryan A. Garner reviewed Justice Stephen Breyer’s edifying new book The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics (Harvard, 2021). If you read the print edition, it’s on page A13. If you have an online subscription, you can read it here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-authority-of-the-court-and-the-peril-of-politics-review-on-judicial-supremacy-11631052401. Now for the …

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LawProse Lesson 368: Ripping what you sew.

They’re called malapropisms: humorous misapplications of words, usually because of a similarity in spelling, sound, or stress pattern. Our favorite recent example appeared last week when the New York Times printed, in large type, *low and behold in place of the age-old lo and behold. The word lo derives from Old English (450–1099) as an interjection that directs attention to the …

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LawProse Lesson 363: A British Counterpart to Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage (Without Prejudice)

Although only a select few legal writers know they exist, usage guides help anyone navigate the tributaries of legal language. Since it first appeared in 1987, Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage (GDLU) has been cited in more than 1,000 appellate opinions in state and federal courts. In the field of legal usage, nothing else has …

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