Remember this? This lesson comes in handy when reading a new Law.com article entitled Law Firm Cost Recovery is Here to Stay. The article discusses the results of a survey by Mattern & Associates about law firm cost-recovery practices. Among the types of costs studied are overnight delivery, outgoing faxes, copies, telephone calls, legal research [...]

Although legal writing expert Judge Mark Painter wrote an article entitled Legal Writing 201: 30 Suggestions to Improve Readability or How to Write For Judges, Not Like Judges, there’s one judge whose writing is always a pleasure to read: Hon Gerald Lebovits of the New York County Civil Court, Housing Part. Judge Lebovits isn’t your [...]

In Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, authors Bryan Garner and Justice Antonin Scalia advise lawyers to “[b]anish jargon, hackneyed expressions and needless Latin” from their briefs. You can accomplish this goal, and write more persuasive briefs, by applying the principles of plain language legal writing. Plain language legal writing refers to legal [...]

Will the grammar goodness never cease? A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you a chapter called “Dirty Words” which Grammar Girl (a/k/a Mignon Fogarty) so generously shared with the public. Now, in honor of the launch yesterday of her new book, Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, Grammar Girl has [...]

I’ve previously proclaimed my love for Grammar Girl, a/k/a Mignon Fogarty. Now I love her even more. Grammar Girl’s new book, appropriately entitled Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, will be available July 8. In honor of the release, GG has released a 40-page chapter called “Dirty Words.” Get your minds out [...]

In an article entitled Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere, The Onion reports: In the midst of a crisis that may have reached a breaking, point Tuesday afternoon, linguists, and grammarians, everywhere say they are baffled, by the sudden and seemingly random, appearance of commas, in our nation’s sentences. The epidemic of errant punctuation has spread, like [...]

I’ve always been a grammar stickler; heck, I have fond memories of diagramming sentences in 10th grade English class. Now, thanks to my co-blogger, Susan, I’ve found my soulmate (don’t tell my husband!): Grammar Girl. Grammar Girl (a/k/a Mignon Forgarty) is a freelance technical writer and editor who writes a blog and produces a podcast [...]

In an article entitled “Speech Crimes” in today’s New York Times, Patricia O’Conner reviews When You Catch and Adjective, Kill it, by Ben Yagoda and The Fight for English by David Crystal. Reviewing these two books in a single article allows O’Conner to juxtapose Yagoda’s centrist position between language prescriptivists (those who try to preserve [...]

Do you remember the recent contract case that was decided by the placement of a comma?   In its Q&A section, the Chicago Manual of Style addressed the placement of a comma in another contract, a store’s return policy. The policy provided that the store would “refund the purchase price of any previewed, defective or mislabeled [...]

I think that Grammar Girl can read my mind.  This week she (or rather her surrogate, Legal Lad) addresses the distinction between “further” and “farther.”  “The quick and dirty tip here is that you use farther to talk about physical distance and further to talk about metaphorical, or figurative, distance. It’s easy to remember because [...]