A little over a year ago, Wayne Schiess posted an essay against placing too much importance on the form of citations: something Wayne referred to as “the tyranny of the inconsequential.” Wayne’s essay is the inspiration for my own New Year’s resolution: to escape the tyranny of the trivial.
Sometimes in our pursuit of excellence, we lose perspective. I’ve seen good legal writers, people who otherwise never spoke a cross word to one another, get mad at each other over trivialities like these:
- right-hand margins (justified or ragged).
- placement of citations (footnotes versus in text).
- spacing at the end of a sentence (one space or two).
My resolution is to keep things like these in perspective. Make no mistake: pursuit of excellence means sweating the details. But let’s remember that good writers can disagree about things like these. More importantly, let’s remember that things like these are relatively unimportant compared to simplicity, conciseness, logic, and writing so as to be understood on the first reading.
Well, OK, but can I still be mad about the new font rule of the Virginia Supreme Court?
Posted by: Steve | 01 January 2008 at 10:29 PM
I have to admit that the Va. proposed rule has me scratching my head. I guess they have a problem with people submitting briefs in fancy fonts, and in quashing the fancy they're going too far in the other direction.
Posted by: Ray Ward | 02 January 2008 at 07:45 AM
Just out of curiosity, what is the new Virginia rule?
Posted by: Greg May | 03 January 2008 at 02:58 PM
It's a proposed Va. Supreme Court rule to require all filings in the court to be in Courier, Arial, or Verdana. Steve Minor talks about it here.
Posted by: Ray Ward | 03 January 2008 at 07:58 PM