LPL

Portmanteau words. A portmanteau is a type of luggage with two separate sections. A portmanteau word is formed by combining the sounds and meanings of two different words. Linguists also call such a word a blend. Most portmanteaus merge the initial part of one word with the end of another: smog (smoke + fog) and infomercial (information + commercial). Others …

LawProse Lesson #194: Portmanteau words. Read More »

Words of the Year 2014. In keeping with a recently established tradition, various lexicographic departments have announced their Words of the Year. For 2014, Oxford Dictionaries picked vape. Although it originated as an abbreviated form of vapor or vaporize, Oxford gave vape its own entry in August 2014. The verb means “to inhale and exhale the vapor …

LawProse Lesson #193: Words of the Year 2014 Read More »

Ethical communications for lawyers: Client confidences.      Trustworthy. That’s how every client should describe you. Keep all client confidences—and make it a habit to keep all confidences in everyday life. The law doesn’t make an exception for spouses or friends, so don’t talk to them about your client’s confidential matters. No matter what. Your …

LawProse Lesson #192: Client confidences. Read More »

Ethical communications for lawyers: Never tell a lie. “He’s not in the office right now.” (Actually, he is.) “I’m not authorized to offer one penny more.” (Actually, she has authority to settle for quite a bit more than she’s saying.) Advice about lying is tricky. But it’s possible to carry on your professional life without …

LawProse Lesson #190: Ethical communications. Never tell a lie. Read More »

Our edited version. We hope you enjoyed testing your editing skills! Here’s our revised version: Marcus Doyle moves to extend the pretrial-filing deadline and respectfully states: On August 4, 2014, this Court ordered Doyle, under Rule 16(b), to submit a pretrial order before January 30, 2015. Although Doyle has diligently prepared for trial, he needs …

Lesson #189 (Part 2): Edits to the exercise. Read More »

Test your editing skills! In our last three lessons, we’ve discussed various tips for legal editing. Now it’s time for you to put those techniques into practice. Try your hand at editing the rough draft of a motion (see below). Keep these points in mind: use precise, strong verbs; avoid legalese and wordy constructions; replace zombie …

LawProse Lesson #189: Test your editing skills! Read More »

A few additional editing tips. In our last two lessons, we explained the LawProse editing method in general (Lesson #186), and we recommended changing be-verbs to action verbs (Lesson #187). Before we give you a full passage to edit on your own (next week!), you should find these last three tips helpful. 1. Remove zombie …

LawProse Lesson #188: A few additional editing tips. Read More »

More on legal editing: changing be-verbs to action verbs. In last week’s lesson—an overview of the LawProse editing method—we recommended converting be-verbs into stronger verbs. Be-verbs lack the punch of action verbs. Overusing weakens your prose, diluting its impact. Although the English language has eight be-verbs (is, am, are, was, were, being, be, been), it’s …

LawProse Lesson #187: More on legal editing. Read More »

“Please edit this.” Have you been asked this before by a friend, colleague, or supervising partner? What kind of edits do they want? Suggestions for content? Corrections of punctuation, spelling, or grammar? It can be a difficult and frustrating request. There are so many ways to go about editing a legal document. At LawProse, we …

An Introduction to Legal Editing Read More »

Parentheses or em-dashes? How do you decide? Good writers use parentheses and em-dashes skillfully to tighten and strengthen their prose. Although a writer’s individual style—together with the information or message to be conveyed—determines how these marks are used, some guidelines can suggest which mark to choose in a specific instance. Here are the basics. Use …

LawProse Lesson #184: Parentheses or em-dashes? How do you decide? Read More »

LawProse Lesson #183  What’s wrong with initial-caps point headings in briefs?      Two things. First, most lawyers don’t know how to type text in initial caps properly. But second—and far more important—proper point headings must capsulize points. They’re complete sentences, not mere phrases. So they’re not like titles such as Gone with the Wind …

LawProse Lesson #183: What’s wrong with initial-caps point headings? Read More »

Home in and *hone in. Home in is the correct phrase, meaning “to proceed toward (a target)” or “direct attention to (a thing, idea, or objective)” {after flying a few miles, the pigeon homed in on the cage} {in the response, the lawyer homed in on the affirmative defense in the criminal code}. The phrase …

LawProse Lesson #182: “Home in” and *”hone in.” Read More »

Grammar and usage resources. Which grammar books are most useful? People frequently ask this question. Perhaps the most compendious treatment can be found in my own chapter five of The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed. 2010). That chapter, which first appeared (in a shorter form) in the 15th edition, is essentially a restatement of …

LawProse Lesson #181: Grammar and usage resources. Read More »

There are certain bits of knowledge that distinguish connoisseurs from poseurs, professionals from dilettantes, cognoscenti from wannabes. In the realm of grammar and writing, it tends to be the sureness that sentence-starting conjunctions are perfectly acceptable and often desirable (connoisseurs), or else the certitude that they are outright mistakes (misinformed poseurs). From at least the …

LawProse Lesson #180: Conjunctions as sentence-starters Read More »

As such. Have you noticed the epidemic of poor usage involving as such? In this phrase, such is a pronoun requiring an antecedent. Here are two examples: Ex.: The lawyer did not intend to write a derogatory review of the new book, but the author saw it as such. [Derogatory review is the antecedent of …

LawProse Lesson #179: “As such” Read More »

Do you know Standard American Punctuation? Let’s take a well-written paragraph—one that shows some linguistic savvy—and remove all the punctuation. Can you punctuate it meaningfully? Capitalize as necessary to begin sentences. “In the end given so much evidence to the contrary the popularity of the austerity myth has come about largely through the power of …

LawProse Lesson #178: Do you know Standard American Punctuation? Read More »

Whoever vs. whomever. Like who and whom, whoever and whomever can be tricky for both lawyers and nonlawyers. Here are a few guidelines that should help: If the word completing the syntax after –ever is a verb, and the –ever word is the subject of that verb, the correct choice is whoever {please send the …

LawProse Lesson #177: “Whoever” vs. “whomever.” Read More »

Who vs. whom. Edward Sapir, the philosopher of language, prophesied in 1921 that “within a couple of hundred years . . . . not even the most learned jurist will be saying ‘Whom did you see?’ By that time the whom will be . . . delightfully archaic . . . . No logical or …

LawProse Lesson #176: “Who” vs. “whom” Read More »

Just between you and ME . . . The grammatical blunder *between you and I is pervasive in writing and speech generally, and legal writers are hardly immune. Writing or saying *between you and I (or *for you and I, *to you and I, and so forth) is invariably wrong: Whenever a pronoun is the …

LawProse Lesson #175: Just between you and ME . . . Read More »

Me, Myself, and I. A pervasive uncertainty about pronoun cases has led to the rampant use of myself as a stuffy substitute for I or me. Not this: Taylor and myself attended the settlement conference. But this: Taylor and I attended the settlement conference. Not this: Please send the signed contract to Cynthia or myself. …

LawProse Lesson #174: Me, Myself, and I Read More »