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Tag Archives: Bryan A. Garner

Bryan Garner Shows Us How to Start a Sentence.

10 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Editing, Grammar, Legal Writing, Persuasive Writing

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ABA Journal, Bryan A. Garner, Legal Writing

How To Start A Sentence: Consider All Your Alternatives, And Sprinkle In Some Conjunctions, Too, by Bryan A. Garner, Bryan Garner on Words, ABA Journal 

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/how_to_start_a_sentence

Bryan Garner is one of the recognized experts on legal writing. This post isn’t about just how to start a sentence. It shows you why the last sentence in a paragraph is the most important, and how to use the first sentence to set it up.

Check out the second paragraph of the post. Look at the example of how to show, not tell.  Don’t worry about whether you understand his use of words, such as “adverbial elements.” Pay attention to his examples. He will show you what works, and what doesn’t.

Were you taught, as I was, never to use a conjunction to start a sentence? In the latter part of this post, Mr. Garner illustrates how using conjunctions to start sentences is an excellent writing tool. And I agree with him. -CCE

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Another Legal Writing Honey Pot

08 Sunday May 2016

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Writing, Legal Argument, Legal Writing, Legalese, Persuasive Writing, Plain Language

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Bryan A. Garner, Legal Writing, The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, U.S. Supreme Court Justices

Transcripts of Bryan Garner’s Transcripts With Supreme Court Justices On Legal Writing And Advocacy, THE SCRIBES JOURNAL OF LEGAL WRITING©

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/garner-transcripts-1.pdf

If you had to pick just one edition of The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, which would be an incredibly hard thing to do, this is certainly one I would strongly recommend. Bryan Garner’s interviews with Supreme Court Justices on legal writing! Does it get any better than this? If you are a legal writing aficionado, or even if you’re not, you’ll appreciate the wisdom here. -CCE  

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Abandon Weak Points To Bolster Your Stronger Legal Arguments.

13 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Brief Writing, Editing, Legal Argument, Legal Writing

≈ Comments Off on Abandon Weak Points To Bolster Your Stronger Legal Arguments.

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ABA Journal, Brief Writing, Bryan A. Garner, Daniel Kahneman, Legal Analysis, Legal Writing

First Impressions Endure, Even In Brief Writing, by Bryan A. Garner, ABA Journal

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/first_impressions_endure_even_in_brief_writing

We have a long history of judges saying that (1) little errors in a brief betoken bigger mistakes, (2) less is more, and (3) good briefs demand little physical or mental effort from the reader. Even so, briefs in most courts are astonishingly ill-proofread, they are rarely tight, and lawyers seldom confine themselves to two or three points. There’s a disconnect between what judges say they want and what lawyers give them. Curious.

There’s also a tendency to disbelieve things that can’t be scientifically proved. Hence I’ve heard lawyers say they don’t care so much about what judges say they find persuasive in written arguments. Those judges might not actually know what motivates them, the skeptical lawyers say. They want proof.

So let’s take the three points mentioned at the outset and see whether, when it comes to judging, there’s any scientific evidence to back up the anecdotal evidence that good writing enhances persuasion. We’ll use the findings of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, the Princeton psychologist and economist who wrote a superb book: Thinking, Fast and Slow. What he says is most illuminating. . . .

Continue reading →

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Collection of Judges’ Best Advice On Legal Writing.

08 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Appellate Law, Appellate Writing, Bad Legal Writing, District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, Editing, Legal Argument, Legal Writing, Legalese, Oregon Supreme Court, Plain Language, Readability, Texas Supreme Court, United States Supreme Court, Wisconsin Supreme Court

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Appellate Brief Writing, Bryan A. Garner, Joseph Kimble, Legal Writing, Legalese, Michigan Bar Association, Plain Language

Judges on Effective Writing: The Importance of Plain Language, by Bryan A. Garner, Vol 84 Mich. B. J. 44 (February 2005)

http://tinyurl.com/kk6trum

Each quote here is a pearl of wisdom – classical and timeless. Look no further to find the heart and soul of effective legal writing. Click on the hyperlink to find the footnotes for each quotation. -CCE

I trust that, after more than 20 years, some of the Plain Language columns are worth reprinting. This one appeared in March 1994. As I noted then, the survey that Mr. Garner mentions in his introduction is the same one that we first did in Michigan, with very similar results. See the October 1987 and May 1990 columns. The judges are identified by their judicial positions when they make their remarks. —JK (Joseph Kimble)

Lawyers are notoriously poor at gauging what judges prefer in legal writing. Too many of us believe, for example, that judges expect us to use legalese. In 1991, when the Texas Plain-Language Committee surveyed all the state district and appellate judges in Texas, we found that more than 80 percent prefer plain language (Plaintiff complains of Defendant and says) over legalese (Now comes the Plaintiff, by and through his attorneys of record, Darrow and Holmes, and for his Original Petition in this cause would respectfully show unto the Court the following). Indeed, several judges responded to the survey with a plea that we stamp out legalese once and for all.

The results of that survey surprised many Texas litigators—and many changed the form of their court papers. But many more have persisted in the old, legalistic style—perhaps out of a fondness akin to what some people feel for the language of the King James Version of the Bible. Judge Lynn Hughes of Houston speaks directly to those litigators: ‘Anyone who thinks Comes now the Plaintiff is anything like the King James Version has no sense of poetry.’

Literary tastes may differ, of course, but it’s worth knowing what judges say—and have been saying for a long time—about the language we lawyers use. Following are some choice quotations I’ve recently collected. —Bryan A. Garner

Judicial Diagnoses

‘Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.’ Hon. Oliver Wendell Holmes1, U.S. Supreme Court

‘[Too many lawyers believe that] it is essential to legal English that one write as pompously as possible, using words and phrases that have long since disappeared from normal English discourse.’ Hon. Antonin Scalia2 , U.S. Supreme Court

‘The reason legal writing has gotten to such a low point is that we have had very bad teachers—judges who wrote years ago and wrote badly. We learned bad habits from them and their opinions in law school.’
Hon. William Bablitch3, Supreme Court of Wisconsin

Stick to the Mother Tongue

‘[The advocate] will stock the arsenal of his mind with tested dialectical weapons. He will master the short Saxon word that pierces the mind like a spear and the simple figure that lights the understanding. He will never drive the judge to his dictionary. He will rejoice in the strength of the mother tongue as found in the King James version of the Bible, and in the power of the terse and flashing phrase of a Kipling or a Churchill.’  Hon. Robert H. Jackson4, U.S. Supreme Court

‘[A]void as much as possible stilted legal language, the thereins, thereofs, whereinbefores, hereinafters, and what-have-yous. Use English wherever you can to express the idea as well and as concisely as in law or Latin. A healthy respect for the robust Anglo-Saxon appeals more than does the Latin, whether or not it is Anglicized. The home-grown product in this case is better than the imported, not to say smuggled, one.’ Hon. Wiley B. Rutledge5, U.S. Supreme Court

‘Write so that you’re understood. English is a hard language to learn, but it’s an easy language to communicate in. There’s no reason to put Latin in your brief.’ Hon. Craig T. Enoch6, Fifth Court of Appeals, Dallas

‘Don’t use legalese. It causes you to put your contentions in stale ways.’ Hon. Thomas Gibbs Gee7, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, 1974-91

‘Legalese is an impediment to clear, logical thinking.’ Hon. F. Lee Duggan8, First Court of Appeals, Houston

‘It’s easier for a judge when you’re using common usage. Judges are only human, after all.’ Hon. Carolyn Wright9, Family District Court, Dallas

Simplify, Simplify!

‘For a hundred years, good lawyers have been writing without all the garbage and in a simple, direct style.’ Hon. Lynn N. Hughes10. U.S. District Court, Houston

‘A lawyer should write the brief at a level a 12th grader could understand. That’s a good rule of thumb. It also aids the writer. Working hard to make a brief simple is extremely rewarding because it helps a lawyer to understand the issue. At the same time, it scores points with the court.’ Hon. William Bablitch11, Supreme Court of Wisconsin

‘When a judge finds a brief which sets up from twelve to twenty or thirty issues or ‘points’ or ‘assignments of error,’ he begins to look for the two or three, perhaps the one, of controlling force. Somebody has got lost in the underbrush and the judge has to get him—or the other fellow—out. That kind of brief may be labeled the ‘obfuscating’ type. It is distinctly not the kind to use if the attorney wishes calm, temperate, dispassionate reason to emanate from the cloister. I strongly advise against use of this type of brief, consciously or unconsciously. Though this fault has been called over-analysis, it is really a type of under-analysis.’ Hon. Wiley B. Rutledge12, U.S. Supreme Court

‘The key is to make the brief easy for the judge to follow.’ Hon. Lloyd Doggett13, Supreme Court of Texas

Cut the Verbiage

‘You want your brief to be as readable as possible . . . . If I pick up a brief of 49 and a half pages, it has a little less credibility than one that succinctly argues its points in 25 pages . . . . There’s nothing better to read than a well-written brief from a really good lawyer.’ Hon. Jerry E. Smith14, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

‘Eye fatigue and irritability set in well before page 50.’ Hon. Patricia M. Wald15, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit

‘A brief should manifest conviction . . . . [That] is virtually impossible . . . if it contains an excessive number of quotations or is larded with numerous citations to the authorities. Short quotations sometimes clinch a point, but long ones fail in that objective.’ Hon. George Rossman16. Supreme Court of Oregon

‘Start in the very first sentence with the problem in this case. Put it right up front. Start early. Don’t bury it under a lot of verbiage and preliminaries.’ Hon. Nathan L. Hecht17, Supreme Court of Texas

Does Style Matter?

‘Style must be regarded as one of the principal tools of the judiciary and it thus deserves detailed attention and repeated emphasis.’ Hon. Griffin B. Bell18, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

‘Lawyers are excused from the necessity of interesting their readers, and all too often—let’s face the evidence—they take advantage of this enviable exemption.’ Hon. Jerome Frank19, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

‘Is good writing rewarded? I used to think it doesn’t matter much, in comparison with legal authority, justice, and the like. Now I know better: Good writing is rewarded so automatically that you don’t even think about it.’ Hon. Murry Cohen20, Fourteenth Court of Appeals, Houston

Bryan A. Garner (bagarner@att.net), president of Dallas-based LawProse, Inc. (www.lawprose.org), is the author of many books on writing, including Legal Writing in Plain English (2001) and The Elements of Legal Style (2d ed. 2002). He is also editor in chief of all current editions of Black’s Law Dictionary. He teaches at Southern Methodist University School of Law.

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Legalese And Other Words You Should Always Cut.

29 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Legal Writing, Legalese

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

ABA Journal, Ambrose Bierce, Bryan A. Garner, editor of the New York Evening Post, Faults, Index Expurgatorius, James Gordon Bennett Jr., Law News Now, Legal Writing, Legalese, Little Blacklist of Literary, New York Evening Post, William Cullen Bryant

Ax These Terms From Your Legal Writing, by Bryan A. Garner, Law News Now, ABA Journal

http://tinyurl.com/kaoqz2o

William Cullen Bryant, editor of the New York Evening Post from 1829 until 1878, created an ‘Index Expurgatorius’ for his newspaper. Certain words simply weren’t allowed in its pages.

Likewise, James Gordon Bennett Jr., owner of the New York Herald from 1867 to 1918, had his ‘Don’t List.’ For example, he wouldn’t allow his journalists to write executive session when they meant secret session.

Keeping a banned-word list is hardly unique to newspapers. The novelist Ambrose Bierce kept a ‘Little Blacklist of Literary Faults,’ published nearly a century ago. He despised committed suicide, preferring instead killed himself (or herself). He likewise disapproved of decease for die, executed for hanged (or put to death), expectorate for spit, inaugurate for begin, prior to for before and so on. He wasn’t fond of genteelisms. No real stylists are.

Legal drafters could benefit from a similar verbal blacklist—a simple list of words that do nothing but blemish the documents that contain them. Learn them and ax them. . . .

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Sayeth or Saith? Actually, It’s Neither.

22 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Affidavits, Bad Legal Writing, Legal Writing, Legalese

≈ Comments Off on Sayeth or Saith? Actually, It’s Neither.

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17th Century, Affidavit, Bryan A. Garner, Further Affiant Sayeth Naught, Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage, LawProse, Legalese

LawProse Lesson #149: “Further Affiant Sayeth Naught,” by Bryan A. Garner, LawProse

http://www.lawprose.org/blog/?p=2506

Further affiant sayeth naught.

Many affidavits close with this classic legalese or some variation of it. Other than the obvious questions (‘What does it mean?’ and ‘Is it necessary?’), this phrase gives rise to two stylistic dilemmas.

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