If you hate Van Morrison or like diagramming sentences, then you’ll love this Language Log post, parsing something he said to a fan. The fan said something like, “We love you, Van.” Morrison’s reply (parsed by our Language Log friends): “Fucking shut the fuck up.”
I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I’ve just learned that the latest issue of JALWD (Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors) has been released. For those unfamiliar with this publication, I think it’s academia’s finest and most advanced contribution to practicing lawyers. It’s going to take me a while to download and read this issue’s articles. But you don’t have to wait for me.
The theme is “Best Practices in Persuasion.” If your legal practice involves persuading people, then read it—or be left behind.
For a long time, people have been searching for gender-neutral singular pronouns. How long? Consider this scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian:
The problem is you don’t always know whether your reader is like Stan or like Reg. Use masculine pronouns to refer to both men and women, and you risk offending Stan. Strive for political correctness, and you risk offending Reg.
One solution: Let gender-neutral plural pronouns do double-duty as singular pronouns. Traditionalists don’t like this solution. But they may be surprised to learn that this usage dates back to Chaucer, and that use of masculine pronouns to refer to both sexes is a relatively recent innovation—only a couple hundred years old. Language mavens Patricia O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman explain in this article for the N.Y. Time Magazine.
Reuters has posted its general style guide on line. Access is free . (Hat tip to Word Wise.)
So these 26th Century archaeologists unearthed some 500-year-old C-Span videos, listened to the debates, took them literally, and used them as the basis for reconstructing the U.S. Capitol. If you’d like to take the tour, William Ecenbarger will be your guide.
Over the weekend, I became probably the last person in New Orleans to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It moved me in ways I’m still trying to understand. One part that sticks in my head appeals to my litigator’s brain. I offer it here for anyone itching to write a long footnote on the difference between cause in fact and proximate cause. It’s a voice-over by the title character, describing a series of events leading to an accident that ended a dancer’s career:
Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 128–33 (2006).
A reader sent me this e-mail request:
My response: You bet—that’s a great idea for a post. While I don’t have any original material to respond with, I’m happy to offer this collection of articles on reply briefs:
The Art of the Reply Brief, by Michael A. Pollard (from For the Defense, May 2009).
The Anatomy of an Effective Reply Brief, by Steffen N. Johnson (from Certworthy, Summer 2006).
No Reply?, by Thomas D. Hird (from Certworthy, Summer 2005).
Having the Last Word: The Appellate Reply Brief, by Paul J. Killion (from Certworthy, Fall 1998).
__________
1 Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction.
A few weeks ago, Ken Davis wrote an interesting post on Manage Your Writing, comparing the writing of a first draft to the building of a prototype. Ken says that, like a prototype, a first draft doesn’t have to be perfect; its purpose is to enable the writer or builder to test ideas.
I don’t disagree with Ken. In fact, most of my own first drafts of briefs are prototypes, never seen by anyone except me. But I do want to offer a competing metaphor to emphasize a different aspect of building a prototype: what Ken describes as the “elaborate planning process” preceding the prototype.
John, a friend and former next-door neighbor, is a professional art-hanger; his job is to hang works of art on the walls of galleries and rich people’s homes. So seven years ago, when I moved into my new office at my then-new firm, I asked John to hang my diploma, other framed credentials, and artwork on my office walls.
Now, when I hang a picture on a wall, I generally follow the trial-and-error method. I guess where the nail or picture hanger should go, hammer it in, hang the picture, decide that it’s too high or low or too far left or right, remove the picture, move the nail or picture hanger to another location, and repeat until satisfied.
That’s not how a pro like John does it. When he came to my office to hang my stuff up, the job took around an hour or so. About 90% of the time was spent planning where the nails would go. First, he talked to me about what I wanted. That took only a few minutes. Most of the time he spent measuring stuff: the framed things, the walls, and various intermediate distances on the walls, and toward the end, making one little pencil mark for each nail (two nails for each framed thing). It took just a couple of minutes to tap the nails into the wall. Then we hung up the stuff. The result: perfect. And perfect on the first try.
What does this story have to do with writing? I’ll grant that we shouldn’t expect any piece of writing to be perfect on the first try. But if it’s a brief, we had better think of spending around 90% to 95% of the time pre-writing: studying the record, doing the research, outlining the evidence, and assessing the arguments. That’s what I do, anyway—I spend far more time pre-writing than actually writing the first draft. The resulting first draft is never perfect, but it’s usually good enough to need only moderate revision and editing before presentation to others for review. (The process is described in a couple of articles that you can find here.)
By all means, treat your first drafts as prototypes. But remember that a good prototype is never just slapped together. If you want the prototype to work, you need to plan it carefully.