LawProse Lessons

LawProse Lessons #67 & #68

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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 […]

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: entomology; etymology.

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entomology; etymology. “Entomology” is the study of insects. “Etymology” is the study of word origins or, more usually, the derivation of a given word. The two words are occasionally confounded — e.g.: o “Fly fishermen must also study the etymology [read ‘entomology’] of insects, what they [read ‘insects’] look like, how they move, so they

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: effect; affect.

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effect; affect. “Effect” (= to bring about) is often misused for “affect” (= to influence, have an effect on). The blunder is widespread — e.g.: o “Opponents say it would effect [read ‘affect’] only a small number of people — in New York an estimated 300 criminals a year — and would have little effect

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Miscellaneous Entries.

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Miscellaneous Entries. rewind / rewound / rewound. So inflected. *"Rewinded" is an infrequent error — e.g.: “Scenes can be freeze-framed and advanced, rewinded [read ‘rewound’] and fast-forwarded with the push-button precision of CD audio or laser disc players.” Steve Persall, “To DVD or Not to DVD?” St. Petersburg Times, 19 Feb. 1999, at 20. Language-Change

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: danglers (6).

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danglers (6). Today: Ending Sentences with Danglers. Traditionally, grammarians frowned on all danglers, but during the 20th century they generally loosened the strictures for a participial construction at the end of a sentence. Some early-20th-century grammarians might have disapproved of the following sentences, but such sentences have long been considered acceptable: o “Sarah stepped to

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LawProse Lessons #69 & #70

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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

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: danglers (5).

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danglers (5). Today: Acceptable Danglers, or Disguised Conjunctions. Any number of present participles have been used as conjunctions or prepositions for so long that they have lost the participial duty of modifying specific nouns. In effect, the clauses they introduce are adverbial, standing apart from and commenting on the content of the sentence. Among the

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: danglers (4).

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danglers (4). Today, Part A: Past-Participial Danglers. These are especially common when the main clause begins with a possessive — e.g.: “Born on March 12, 1944, in Dalton, Georgia, Larry Lee Simms’s qualifications . . . .” Barbara H. Craig, Chadha: The Story of an Epic Constitutional Struggle 79 (1988). (Simms’s qualifications were not born

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: danglers (3).

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danglers (3). Today: Present-Participial Danglers. Mispositioned words can cause grammatical blunders. The classic example occurs when the wrong noun begins the main clause — that is, a noun other than the one expected by the reader after digesting the introductory participial phrase. E.g.: “The newspaper said that before being treated for their injuries, General Mladic

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: danglers (2).

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danglers (2). Today: The ubiquity of danglers. Despite the sloppiness of danglers in general, they have been exceedingly common even among grammarians. For example, a biographical entry on Lindley Murray (1745-1826), the best-selling grammarian of the early 19th century, condemned his participial habits: “In spite of his proverbial credit as an authority, his own style

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: danglers (1).

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danglers (1). So-called danglers are ordinarily unattached participles — either present participles (ending in “-ing”) or past participles (ending usually in “-ed”) — that do not relate syntactically to the nouns they are supposed to modify. That is, when the antecedent of a participle doesn’t appear where it logically should, the participle is said to

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Miscellaneous Entries.

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Miscellaneous Entries. revise; redact; recense. The first is the ordinary word. The second and third refer specifically to revising texts with close scrutiny. “Redact” = (1) to make a draft of; or (2) to edit. In American law, it is often used in the sense “to edit out or mask the privileged, impertinent, or objectionable

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Denizen Labels (2).

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Denizen Labels (2). Today: U.S. States and Cities. The preferred names for residents of some places are not immediately obvious. Listed below are some of those terms that are associated with U.S. states and cities. USGPO refers to the U.S. Government Printing Office Manual of Style. Arkansas: Arkansan, Arkansawyer, Arkie. Connecticut: Nutmegger, Connecticuter (USGPO). Delaware:

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: exquisite.

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exquisite. Part A: Pronunciation. The word is better pronounced with the first syllable accented /EK-skwiz-it/; in American English, however, stressing the second (/ek-SKWIZ-it/) is acceptable. Part B: Use. Although there is historical justification for using “exquisite” (= acute) in reference to pain, modern readers are likely to find this use macabre at best, for they

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Denizen Labels (2).

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Denizen Labels (2). Today: U.S. States and Cities. The preferred names for residents of some places are not immediately obvious. Listed below are some of those terms that are associated with U.S. states and cities. USGPO refers to the U.S. Government Printing Office Manual of Style. Arkansas: Arkansan, Arkansawyer, Arkie. Connecticut: Nutmegger, Connecticuter (USGPO). Delaware:

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Denizen Labels (1).

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Denizen Labels (1). Today: Generally. What do you call someone from . . . ? Often that’s not an easy question. Residents of Columbus, Ohio (or Georgia, Nebraska, or Indiana) are called “Columbusites.” But someone from the town of Columbus, Mississippi, is called a “Columbian.” Those inconsistencies can be confusing, but they’re usually undisputed within

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Miscellaneous Entries.

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Miscellaneous Entries. reverend. In denoting a member of the clergy, this term has traditionally been restricted to adjectival uses, as one newspaper acknowledged after being upbraided by a careful reader: “We referred correctly to the Rev. Wiley Drake, . . . but an inside subhead read, ‘The reverend says.’ Some dictionaries recognize reverend as a

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: couple (4).

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couple (4). Today: With Words of Comparison. When “couple” is used with comparison words such as “more,” “fewer,” and “too many,” the “of” is omitted. In the sentence “I’d like a couple more shrimp,” “shrimp” is the direct object. It is modified by the adjective “more,” which in turn is modified by the adverbial phrase

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: couple (2).

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couple (2). Today: For “a few.” As a noun, “couple” has traditionally denoted a pair. (As a verb, it always denotes the joining of two things.) But in some uses, the precise number is vague. Essentially, it’s equivalent to “a few” or “several.” In informal contexts this usage is quite common and unexceptionable — e.g.:

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: couple (1).

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couple (1). Today: Number. “Couple” (= pair) is a collective noun like “team,” “company,” or “faculty.” As a rule, a collective noun in American English takes a singular verb unless the action is clearly that of the individual participants rather than collective. When two people form a couple, they may act as individuals or as

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