LawProse Lessons

In June 2020, the AP Stylebook changed its policy to favor capitalizing Black whenever the word is used in a racial, ethnic, or cultural sense. Meanwhile, white would be lowercase even in corresponding senses. The change occurred after years of consideration and close study. Here’s the reasoning. Most white people in North America can and …

LawProse Lesson 373: On capitalizing “Black” but not “white” Read More »

First, establish deadlines for each step. Then: Step One: Have everyone draft two to three deep issues, not to exceed 75 words apiece. (See The Winning Brief 104–09 [3d ed. 2014].) Step Two: The team leader cherry-picks the best issue statements, puts together a master draft using no more than four issues, and circulates it for edits and improvements—insisting …

LawProse Lesson 372: How to Write a Brief with a Team Read More »

What’s a quotation sandwich? It’s a means of making quotations an integral part of your writing. You don’t just plunk them on the page. You introduce them informatively and follow up smoothly. Though rare among legal writers, quotation sandwiches are delectable. They overcome a problem we often hear about from appellate judges and law-firm partners. …

LawProse Lesson 371: Quotation Sandwich, Anyone? Read More »

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 …

LawProse Lesson 370: Justice Breyer on the Judiciary Read More »

If there’s one thing that LawProse is famous for, it’s teaching lawyers how to frame legal problems clearly—so that readers will almost instantly understand what’s going on. It’s a tall order. If you’re engaged in advocacy or analysis, the most important thing is stating the problem clearly on page one. Right at the beginning. No …

LawProse Lesson 369: But what’s page one for? Read More »

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 …

LawProse Lesson 368: Ripping what you sew. Read More »

You’ve surely heard of preventive lawyering, preventive maintenance, and preventive medicine. What they denote is related to the old adage: a stitch in time saves nine. But an extra stitch is often added to the word: the additional syllable in *preventative. That’s what you hear if you listen to many TV commentators. One popular announcer …

LawProse Lesson 367: Preventive measures are recommended. Read More »

Most kids begin to learn punctuation from ages 8 to 11. It’s a highly impressionable age. The curriculum is fairly standard except on one recurrent point: do you or don’t you put a comma before the and or or that introduces the final item in a list? Some curricula say yes; others say no. A …

LawProse Lesson 366: The Serial Comma Read More »

At LawProse, we’ve long stressed the capital importance of openers. We’ve likened the first paragraph of a brief—a good one, anyway—to the fanfare in a Sousa march. It announces the song. The point was reinforced recently in a BBC interview with the composer Monty Norman, who wrote the memorable theme song for the James Bond …

LawProse Lesson 365: The James Bond Theme Read More »

For a long time, Bryan Garner and LawProse were defenders of the hyphen in e-mail. No longer. We’re realists. This type of question—e-mail or email—depends on actual usage. From the inception of email in the late 1970s, the word was predominantly hyphenated. (Same with e-business, e-commerce, etc.) In print sources, the turning point came in …

LawProse Lesson 364: Please don’t deluge us with emails Read More »

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 …

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

Editing well involves close reading. But this lesson is about bad editing. One way to edit poorly is to be preoccupied with other things. After all, you’re an important, extremely busy person with many demands on your time. Your billable rate—you think about it often—is quite high, though not everyone in your life understands that. …

LawProse Lesson 362: One of the Worst Ways to Edit Read More »

Many stylists avoid this phrasal preposition on grounds that it displaces too many ordinary, down-to-earth, single words: about <a rule about something>, at <surprised at how quickly>, by <surprised by the number>, for <same rules for individual taxpayers>, into <inquired into the problem>, of <unsure of the rule>, on <agree on a deadline>, to <the …

LawProse Lesson 361: The vague “as to” Read More »

Reviewing your own prose for improvements is a cognitively challenging task. You’re trying to spot problems—wherever they might lurk—and fix them. If you’re a self-editor with at least moderate skills, you’ll do better in more than one go. The task entails repetition. The challenge is to see your piece a little differently each time. Here’s …

LawProse Lesson 360: A Tip on Revision and Proofreading. Read More »

When will clarity come? We hope it’s when you arrive on the scene—when you begin writing about whatever it is. For many legal writers, that’s just not the case. They probably don’t understand the reader–writer relationship, in which the reader’s interests are paramount. They may lack the skill of empathy—or perhaps just the skill of …

LawProse Lesson 359: When you begin writing. Read More »

What’s the great secret of writing style? Having something to say—and saying it clearly. You don’t say something because you want to write. That’s backward. You write because you want to say something. You have something to declare. Legal writers would do better work if they worried much more in the first instance about what …

LawProse Lesson 357: Have something to say. Read More »

At LawProse, while writing a federal appellate brief over the past two weeks, we’ve been reminded of Boone Pickens (1928–2019). Why? He liked to say that a fool with a plan can beat a genius without one. We believe that. We had a plan for this brief—meaning we had an outline with point headings. We …

LawProse Lesson 356: Building a Brief the Boone Pickens Way Read More »

Before pressing “send” on an e-mail message, tweet, or social-media post, it’s worth pausing to ask yourself some questions: ● Have you been completely truthful? ● Have you said all that you need to say? ● Have you been appropriately diplomatic and fair? Once you’ve answered those questions affirmatively, read the message once more for …

LawProse Lesson 355: Ask these questions before sending Read More »

Is we the people (or, in the Constitution, We the People) a set phrase that cannot be varied according to the grammar? Is it invariably we the people, or should we make it us the people when the phrase functions as the object of a verb or a preposition? We the people need to know; it’s …

LawProse Lesson 354: We the people demand to know! Read More »