Who better to advise lawyers about document design than a lawyer trained in typography and graphic design, one whose pre-law career included typeface design? Meet Matthew Butterick, proprietor of Typography for Lawyers. And if you agree that presentation matters, bookmark his site for future reference. (Hat tip to Slaw.)
Wayne Schiess has posted an excellent summary of basic document-design principles for lawyers and other writers. If you’re interested in the scientific research supporting Wayne’s principles, read Painting With Print by Ruth Anne Robbins. If you just want a one-minute how-to, read Wayne’s post.
Here is an article I wrote for the Winter 2008 issue of Certworthy about selecting the right font for a writing project. The skinny version:
Let’s say your memorandum cites 28 U.S.C. § 1331. Let’s say the citation occurs near the end of a line, so that the § is at the end of one line and the 1331 is at the beginning of the next. How do you keep the two together on the same line with a space in between?
Answer: You type a non-breaking space, also known as a hard space or a fixed space. A non-breaking space prevents an automatic line break at its location.
Web-page coders create a non-breaking space by typing the HTML code “ ”. That doesn’t help you if you’re writing your memorandum in Word. But this tip will: To type a non-breaking space, just hold the CTRL and SHIFT keys down while pressing the space bar once.
A similar trick works for typing a non-breaking hyphen: hold the CTRL and SHIFT keys down while pressing the hyphen key.
A few days ago, I thought there were only two typefaces designed for on-screen reading: Georgia (with serifs) and Verdana (sans serif). But if you’re running Microsoft Office 2007 or Microsoft Vista, you have more choices: six new fonts forming Microsoft’s ClearType collection. Ken Adams dug into them a few days ago, and underwent a conversion from Times New Roman to Calibri — a most attractive sans serif font. To learn about the new fonts and the ClearType technology behind them, read Ken’s post and this article on Poynter Online.
Due to court rules, litigators will likely have to stick with serif fonts, at least for text. The ClearType collection offers two: Cambria and Constantina. According to the Poynter article, Cambria is designed to serve as an “all-purpose workhorse text face,” suitable for most business applications. Constantina is designed to look consistent (and consistently beautiful) in both print and on-screen applications. If you’re running Vista or Office 2007, you may want to experiment with them.
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p.s. E-mail from Ken: “Your post today misses one important aspect of the ClearType fonts—you can use them if you have Office 2003 and you download the compatibility pack. (I include a link in my post.) That’s what I’ve done, because I haven’t yet shifted to Office 2007.”
Another point important for those not enamored of Vista: According to Microsoft, Windows XP supports ClearType.
Good document design makes your brief not only more visually appealing, but also more persuasive. In Visual Rhetoric in the Appellate Brief, Linda Morkan explains why.
This morning’s Times-Picayune contains an interesting non-lawyer’s perspective on typography in legal writing. It’s in an op-ed piece by Stephanie Grace, commenting on a brief filed by Louisiana's attorney general, Charles Foti. In a case being prosecuted by Foti’s office, the defense moved to disqualify Foti based on a conflict of interests. Foti filed an opposition that Grace found “thoroughly bizarre.”
What created this impression of bizarreness? Besides the content, it was Foti’s liberal use of “unusual emphasis”: underlining, bold type, italics, all-caps, and exclamation points. Unfortunately, the Times-Picayune’s web site does not reproduce those typographical special effects; so below is an except from Grace’s column showing how it looks in the newspaper:
It is “mandatory” that the AG be involved in cases such as this, he argued.
“The outcome of either the civil or criminal aspects of this case present no personal advantage to Charles Foti, Jr., nor any person in the Louisiana Department of Justice,” he opined elsewhere.
“The sole purpose in this attack is the mistaken belief that the Attorney General may somehow ‘fold’ rather than fight the present case,” he continued. “The present motion is clearly a violation of ethics in and of itself by failing to follow the proper procedure and protocol for making such an allegation. COUNSEL IS FULLY AWARE OF THIS DEFECT AND THE DESIRED EFFECT THEY SEEK TO ACHIEVE AND THE MADNESS OF THEIR METHOD.”
And then there was this: “What the defendants request of the court is to remove the Attorney General and his office for doing his job!!!!”
That’s right, folks, four exclamation points.
Grace’s critique: While a criminal prosecution is personal and emotional for the defendant, the victim, and the victim’s family, “it’s not supposed to be [emotional] for the prosecutor.” She continues:
While everyone likes to win, Foti’s mission should be to work within the confines of the system, even if it does not lead to the outcome he vehemently desires. And that requires a measure of level-headedness and dispassionate analysis that he seems to have trouble mustering these days.
And it requires him to address the other side’s legal arguments on their merit, not take them as an affront.
Our lesson for today: If your written argument is laced with bold, underlined, or italicized text, you’ll make a strong impression—but it won’t be a good one.
Roy Jacobsen, author of Writing, Clear and Simple, has converted two of his articles to PDF and made them available for free download. Usually PDF is good for reading on paper but not so good for on-screen reading. Roy’s PDF articles are different: their layout is designed for on-screen reading, and the result is a beautiful presentation. To see for yourself, download Bah Humbug! Business Jargon Needn’t Be a Done Deal and Plain Language in the Federal Government. For the full effect, allow your PDF reader to display in full-screen format. (For Adobe Reader v.8, click on “View,” then select “Full Screen Mode,” or hit control-L.)
As you look at these articles, make some mental notes. Observe the simple things that Roy does to makes these articles not only readable, but visually beautiful.
What font do writers use when composing? According to this article in Slate,1 many prefer to compose in Courier. The two main reasons seem to be: (1) Nostalgia. If they can’t enjoy the smell, feel, and sound of their typewriters, they can at least savor the appearance of the text. (2) Editing. A draft written in Courier looks like a draft, not like a final product, making it easier to accept its need for editing.
Here’s my suggestion: For on-screen composing, try Georgia, which is designed for on-screen reading.
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1Hat tip to Matthew Stibbe.
What’s wrong with fully justified text? If it’s professionally typeset, nothing. But if it’s created with WordPerfect or Word, it’s harder to read. That’s what Ken Adams concluded after researching the matter. If you care about how readable your documents are, you must read his post. For my own uninformed opinion, read this two-year-old post on Minor Wisdom.
