LawProse Lessons

LawProse Lessons #69 & #70

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
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 (2).

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
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: routinize.

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
routinize. “Routinize” (= to develop into a regular schedule) is pronounced either /ROO-tuh-nIz/ or /roo-TEE-nIz/. Although this word (dating from the early 1920s) sometimes smacks of gobbledygook, it’s also difficult to replace — e.g.: o “The raunchiness that some, at least, admired in the earlier book has been replaced by routinized descriptions of the hydraulics …

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