Tag Archives: Abbreviations

A Novel Approach To Circuit Court’s Word Limit Rule. If Only It Had Worked!

22 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by in Abbreviations, Appellate Writing, Bad Legal Writing, Brief Writing, Editing, Initialisms, Legal Writing, Readability

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Squished-Together Words Don’t Count As One, Federal Circuit Says; Appeal Is Tossed, by Debra Cassen Weiss, ABA Journal (with hat tip to William P. Statsky!)

http://tinyurl.com/kqmddjt

A litigant that squeezed multiple words together and resorted to abbreviations didn’t satisfy word limits in its briefs and won’t be able to pursue its appeal, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The appeals court tossed the patent appeal by Pi-Net International in an April 20 order (PDF). How Appealing links to the opinion and a story by Law360 (sub. req.), which dubbed the creative wording ‘a trick straight out of high school English class.’ . . .

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On appeal, JPMorgan objected to Pi-Net’s first brief, saying it attempted to evade the 14,000 word limit by deleting spaces between various words and squeezing them together, according to the Federal Circuit. The Federal Circuit offered an example: One case citation consists of 14 words, but Pi-Net squeezed them together to make them into one word. . . .

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Too Many Acronyms = Alphabet Soup.

16 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by in Abbreviations, Acronyms, Bad Legal Writing, Brief Writing, Court Rules, Courts, Initialisms, Legal Writing, Local Rules, Spell Checking

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Check Your Briefs For Acronym Overuse, DC Circuit Clerk Tells Lawyers In Campaign Finance Case, by Debra Cassen Weiss, ABA Journal

http://tinyurl.com/mff4sqx

Acronyms continue to bedevil the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Parties before the court are advised in circuit rules to avoid little-known acronyms; lawyers who didn’t heed the advice were called out in a 2012 opinion. Now the clerk’s office is doing its part to police the briefs. . . .

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Text And Tweet Abbreviations Are Okay – Sometimes.

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Abbreviations, Legal Writing

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Text Messaging, the Internet, and Formality, by Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl Blog

http://tinyurl.com/pxw477f

These admonitions apply to emails as well. -CCE

A few weeks ago I saw something that before then I had heard of but hadn’t seen myself: a smiley face in a very formal document, or, I suppose I should say, what should have been a very formal document. I literally thought of it and then sputtered for days.

There’s nothing new about cute abbreviations. OK, one of the most recognized English words in the world, came out of a cute abbreviation, and America’s founding fathers could have used the abbreviation IOU (for I owe you). A few decades later, the cost of sending a telegram encouraged people to use even more abbreviations and shortened forms of words. Today though, smartphone-wielding text messagers and tweeters may be playing with language and abbreviations more than ever before. And there’s nothing wrong with that! If you want to text your best buddy you’re going to be l8 (late) or that you LOLed (laughed out loud), have at it. That’s an appropriately informal situation. I just discovered that my phone has Halloween emoji, so you may be seeing ghosts or pumpkins on my Twitter feed soon. They look like fun.

But here are some formal documents in which you shouldn’t use emoji, smiley faces, or text messaging abbreviations: business plans, mission statements, resumes, cover letters, letters of recommendation, or pretty much any school assignment that I can think of right now. Seriously, you still need to take some things seriously.

Internet’s Largest, Comprehensive Directory, and Search Engine for Acronyms, Abbreviations. and Initialisms.

05 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by in Abbreviations, Acronyms, Initialisms, Legal Writing, References

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Abbreviations.com, a Member of the Stands4 Network

http://www.abbreviations.com/

What the heck is an initialism? Happily, Mark Nichol at DailyWritingTips Blog has a complete explanation here: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/initialisms-and-acronyms/. -CCE

We are the world’s largest and most comprehensive directory and search engine for acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms on the Internet. Abbreviations.com holds hundreds of thousands of entries organized by a large variety of categories from computing and the Web to governmental, medicine and business and it is maintained and expanded by a large community of passionate editors. Read more about our awards and press coverage.

Are Acronyms Effective or Alphabet Soup?

15 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Acronyms, Closing Argument, Cross-Examination, Direct Examination, Jury Persuasion, Legal Writing, Making Objections, Opening Argument, Oral Argument, Trial Tips and Techniques, Voir Dire

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DUA: Don’t Use Acronyms, by Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm, Persuasive Litigators Blog

http://tinyurl.com/p66tcgk

I’m monitoring a criminal trial this week, and at the end of opening statements, the judge looked at the jury and said, ‘Okay, both sides have been referring to ‘AUSAs’ — they know what that means and I know what that means, but I’m guessing that you don’t know that that means?” Head nods from the jury. ‘It means ‘Assistant U.S. Attorney,’ continued the judge, “so please fill that in wherever you hear it.” Good solution? Better than nothing. But it would have been best if both sides would have simply used the title instead of abbreviating it. The tiny amount of additional time it takes to say ‘Assistant U.S. Attorney’ rather than ‘USA’ is well worth it in terms of clarity and understanding.

But some attorneys, experts, and other witnesses continue to love the economy of the acronym. But particularly in spoken communication, and particularly in front of a jury, that economy comes at a cost: meaning lost in translation and increased cognitive workload even when it is translated. Practical persuaders before a lay audience are well advised to avoid acronyms almost entirely. Okay, I say almost entirely — there are some exceptions (and besides ‘Generally Avoid Acronyms’ would have been ‘GAA.’) The few acronyms that ought to still be used are those that have such widespread familiarity that they almost become words in their own right: USA, CNN, or ASAP. In all other cases where the acronyms don’t benefit from automatic translation, the litigator is best off choosing the full expression and not the acronym. This post takes a look at a few reasons, implications, and replacements for trial persuaders looking to lose the alphabet soup of acronyms. . . .

The Library of Congress’ Virtual Reference Shelf.

13 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in Recent Links and Articles, References, Research

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Virtual Reference Shelf, Library of Congress

http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/virtualref.html#abbreviations

Do you for some kind of inexplicable reason want to look up The Guide to Government Abbreviations? It’s here. In fact, the Virtual Reference Shelf has in-depth information on Abbreviations, Art, Business, Calculators, Children & Parents (e.g., The U.S. Government Guide for Kids), Dictionaries & Thesauri, Directories, Education, Encyclopedias, English Language and Literature, Full-Text Books & Periodicals, Genealogy, General Reference Resources, Grant Resources, Health/Medical, U.S. History – and more. Check it out. It is more than you probably expect. -CCE