Minor Wisdom

Briefing the standard of review

Here is an interesting email I got from a regular reader:

I have been writing a slew of motions for summary judgment or oppositions. Now for the umpteenth time I am writing the classic.... "The standard for summary judgment is......" I have also seen some of my opponents write on and on about the standard and when a court may and may not grant summary judgments.

I am thinking to myself that the reader of this memorandum knows very well what the standard is.& Any thoughts on why one should not just do a simple 2 to 3 sentences of citing the codal article and one of the later cases from the court's district which expounds on the issue and then get out and go on to the meat. Is it just lawyer paranoia that makes us write so much on the "standard" or does it serve some purpose?

I can't answer for other lawyers, so I'll answer just for myself. If you're interested in the discussion, click on "Continue reading ..." below.

Shaved cat, cute kid

Last week, we took Rocky to the vet for his every-few-months shaving—the only way we can manage his coat without giving up our day jobs. His last shaving was in March. Here's how he looked with a four-month growth:

And here's how he looked after:

Meanwhile, going through my late mom's papers and things, I came across some of my old grade-school portraits. I don't have a scanner, so I photographed them with my Nikon digital, set on "copy," which produced the black-and-white photo, and "closeup," which produced the color photo. I started wearing glasses in third grade, so my guess is that these were taken sometime between fourth and sixth grades.

(Click on the thumbnail to see a slightly larger image.)

NCSU online writing lab resources

Apparently North Carolina State University used to have an online writing lab. It's not there anymore—a victim of lack of funding. But all is not lost, as the proprietor, Nancy Margolis, left behind a page full of links to writing resources—you'll even find an on-line version of Strunk & White's Elements of Style.

5-second lesson, expanded to 2 minutes

Yesterday, I wrote this five-second lesson:

Before: At no time did Pantheon explain ...
After: Pantheon never explained ...

Here is a slightly expanded version of that lesson:

Something I learned from Ed Good's A Grammar Book for You and I ... Oops, Me! is that avoiding wordiness is a science, not an art: the science is grammar. The key to reducing wordiness is to convert clauses into phrases, and to convert phrases into single words. You do this by analyzing the clause or phrase grammatically, determine how it functions in the sentence, and replacing it with a less wordy substitute.

For instance, in our example, at no time is a prepositional phrase. A prepositional phrase always functions as a modifier. If it modifies a noun, it functions as an adjective. If it modifies any other word, it functions as an adverb. In this example, at no time functions as an adverb, modifying the verb did ... explain.

Is there an adverb that conveys the meaning of at no time? Of course there is: never does the job nicely. Substitute never for at no time, you're left with "Pantheon never did explain ...." The next step, chopping down that two-word verb into a one-word verb, then becomes apparent: "Pantheon never explained ..."

Bryan Garner teaches legal-writing students to watch out for beware the preposition of, because it's usually a sign of it usually signals wordiness. But the same goes for any other prepositional phrase. When you see one, study it, determine how it functions grammatically (adjective or adverb), and search your personal vocabulary for a one-word substitute.

2005 Bulwer–Lytton prize

As I sit before my computer, on a dark and stormy New Orleans night (really, no kidding), I read Electronic Ephemera, which leads me to the 2005 Bulwer–Lytton prize. For those unfamiliar with B–L, here's the skinny:

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

Here's the winning entry:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.

To read the runner-up entries, click here.

5-second lesson in avoiding wordiness

Before: At no time did Pantheon explain ...
After: Pantheon never explained ...

English lessons, Japanese style

ANMI English Tools is a blog offering "[t]ips and advice for my English students and anyone else who is learning English." Read today's post about the serial comma, and you'll be hooked.

Note: Though the lessons are in English, the page also displays some Japanese translations. If you don't have Japanese characters installed on your computer, the Japanese may not display correctly.

Darfur and the media

This week's Darfur report, titled Witness, explores media coverage of the genocide—or lack thereof—and explores the reasons behind it.

Blood debt

Here is an essay on the death penalty, published by First Things and described by Rick Garnett of Mirror of Justice as "powerful, and provocative, and [having] more in it than I can capture here."

To me, the death penalty isn't about the criminals; it's about us. It's not about whether they deserve to die; it's about whether we ought to kill them—what killing them does to us.

I remember a bit of dialogue in a Clint Eastwood movie, just a few years old. A gunman has just killed a man, a hired killing in revenge for the man's knife attack on a woman. The gunman says to his partner, "Well, I guess he had it coming." His partner replies, "We all got it coming, kid." The name of the movie is Unforgiven.

Collection of legal-writing links

Abbie Bradfield Mulvihill has a nice collection of legal-writing links on Abbie Bradfield Mulvihill's blog, AbsTracted.