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Tag Archives: Proofreading

Trouble With Typos? Ten Tips To Help Get Rid of Them.

25 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Editing, Legal Writing, Proofreading, Spell Checking

≈ Comments Off on Trouble With Typos? Ten Tips To Help Get Rid of Them.

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Grammar Girl Blog, Legal Writing, Mignon Fogarty, Proofreading, Typos, Writing Errors

10 Tips to Banish Typos, by Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl Blog

 http://tinyurl.com/kavzl5t

Funny Typos

Typos can seem funny after the fact. A couple of years ago I told you about someone who accidentally recommended a friend as a ‘fat and accurate typist’ instead of a ‘fast and accurate typist’ and another person who wrote to tell a friend he had written an excellent report and instead called it an ‘excrement report.’

Costly Typos

Some typos are more than embarrassing; they’re costly. Contracts, for example, are not good places for typos. A Canadian utility company became famous for the ‘million dollar comma‘ lawsuit when they had to pay another company more than $2 million because of a misplaced comma.

Old Typos

Typos aren’t a new problem either. There are a few old editions of the King James Bible that have typos. A 1612 edition known as the ‘Printers Bible’ reads ‘Printers have persecuted me without a cause’ instead of ‘Princes have persecuted me without a cause,’ and another one from 1635 is called the ‘Sinner’s Bible’ because it reads ‘Thou shalt commit adultery’ instead of ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ Whoops.

When you want to avoid embarrassing yourself, incurring costly lawsuits, and leading believers astray, here are 10 tips to help.

  1. Have someone else read your work. The best way to find typos is to have someone else read your work. They don’t know what you meant to say, and their fresh eyes will almost always catch things you missed. Since that’s not always possible, here are some other solutions.
  2. When you’re writing on your computer, use the auto-correct feature.I also call this the ‘know thyself’ trick. For example, I always type ‘pateint’ instead of ‘patient.’ Always. But with the auto-correct feature in my word-processing software, I can tell the computer that every time I type ‘pateint’ it should insert ‘patient.’ Problem solved!

The best way to find typos is to have someone else read your work.

  1. Run your work through your computer’s spell-checking tool. It’s amazing how many people don’t do this. Don’t think the computer is infallible though. The first choice it gives you may not be the right one, and spell-checkers often think correct possessives such as children’s and someone else’s are wrong. The computer can highlight things you should check yourself, but it isn’t perfect.
  2. Print your work.Always proofread a printed version of your work. Many people find that if they try to proofread on a computer monitor, they miss more errors than when reading a printed copy of their work.
  3. Give yourself some time.If possible, let your work sit for a while before you proofread it. If you are able to clear your mind and approach the writing from a fresh perspective, then your brain is more able to focus on the actual words, rather than seeing the words you think you wrote.
  4. Read your work aloud.This forces you to read each word individually. I write a script for each Grammar Girl podcast, and when I read it to record the show, I almost always find an error I missed when proofreading it other ways. A long time ago, a listener told me that he felt uncomfortable reading his writing aloud at work, so he does it while pretending to talk on the phone so people don’t know what he’s doing.
  5. Force yourself to view each word.If you don’t want to read aloud, you can force yourself to consider each word by using the tip of a pencil or pen to physically touch each word. You can also force yourself to focus on smaller sections of the document by putting a ruler under each line of text as you are reading or by cutting out a small rectangular window on an index card and sliding it over your copy as you read.

[[AdMiddle]8. Read your work backward, starting with the last sentence and working your way in reverse order to the beginning. Supposedly, this works better than reading through from the beginning because your brain knows what you meant to write, so you tend to skip over spelling mistakes when you’re reading forward.

Philip Corbet recently reviewed some of his favorite proofreading tips in his New York Times column ‘After Deadline,’ and I picked up a couple of new ideas there.

  1. Separate proofreading tasks.Read the article through once to just check the spelling, and then read it through again to just check the punctuation. By separating tasks, you’ll be able to focus better on each one.

(He also showed an example of a sentence that looked like a revision gone awry–as though the writer had rewritten the sentence but forgotten to remove remnants of the earlier version–and that really struck a chord with me. Almost every time I post a terrible typo to Twitter or Facebook, it’s because I was repeatedly editing the post to make it shorter and didn’t see that something got left in from an earlier version. So the advice is to be especially careful when you’re revising things at the last second.)

  1. Print your work in a different font with different margins.Bryan Garner, the author of Garner’s Modern American Usage, posted this tip to his Twitter feed: ‘When you’re sick of editing your own work, you should print it in a different font with different margins. It works!’ I’m going to try that one on my next book.

If you want to raise a happy dog who loves to play and cuddle–but still comes when called and doesn’t chew up your favorite shoes–you need Jolanta Benal’s The Dog Trainer’s Complete Guide to a Happy, Well-Behaved Pet: http://bit.ly/upuIhO

Distractions

VIDEO: ‘The Impotence of Proofreading‘ by Taylor Mali.

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Garner’s Ten Legal Writing Tips.

05 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Briefing Cases, Citations, Editing, Legal Analysis, Legal Argument, Legal Writing, Proofreading, Public Domain Citations, Readability, Spell Checking, The Bluebook

≈ Comments Off on Garner’s Ten Legal Writing Tips.

Tags

ABA Journal, Bryan Garner, Computer Legal Research, Editing, Legal Analysis, Legal Citations, Legal Writing, Proofreading

Ten Tips for Legal Writing, by Judith D. Fischer, Legal Writing Prof Blog

http://tinyurl.com/pwlxeyt

Bryan Garner’s latest article in in the ABA Journal is titled Ten Tips for Better Legal Writing. Some Garner of his tips are especially appropriate for law students, who could appropriately paste ‘Don’t rely exclusively on computer research’ on the wall by their work space. That would serve as a reminder that unfocused computer searches are like a box of chocolates–you never know what you’re going to get.  Garner also advises legal writers to be neither too tentative nor too cocksure in their conclusions, both of which are hazards for beginning law students. And Garner’s tenth tip would improve the professionalism of many a student paper: ‘Proofread one more time than you think necessary.’

 

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It Could Happen To Anyone – But Justice Scalia Isn’t Just Anyone.

22 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Writing, Legal Writing, Proofreading

≈ Comments Off on It Could Happen To Anyone – But Justice Scalia Isn’t Just Anyone.

Tags

Good Legal Writing, Justice Scalia, Legal Writing, Proofreading, Tiffany Johnson

Would You Like Salt on That Crow?, by Tiffany Johnson, Good Legal Writing

http://goodlegalwriting.com/2014/07/22/would-you-like-salt-on-that-crow/

So, the Honorable Justice Antonin Scalia — renown legal genius and reigning undisputed heavyweight champion of biting rhetorical snark — has now been reduced to making clandestine corrections to one of his famously condescending dissents. . . .

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More Yummy Candy for Writers.

12 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Citations, Editing, Legal Writing, Proofreading, Readability, Spell Checking, Style Manuals

≈ Comments Off on More Yummy Candy for Writers.

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Grammar and Punctuation, Proofreading, Style Manual, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW Madison Writer’s Handbook

UW Madison Writer’s Handbook, The Writing Center @ The University of Wisconsin-Madison

http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/index.html

For all writers, I strongly recommend a review of all the sections under “Grammar and Punctuation,” but especially: “Subject-Verb Agreement,” “How to Proofread,” “Twelve Common Errors: An Editing Checklist,” and “Clear, Concise Sentences.”

If you are a legal writer, please note that this style manual’s rules on citations are not in sync with The Bluebook, ALWD, or court rules. -CCE

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George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Bad Legal Writing, Editing, Legal Writing, Legalese, Plain Language, Proofreading, Readability

≈ Comments Off on George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”

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Bad Legal Writing, Editing, George Orwell, Grammar and Punctuation, Legal Writing, Legalese, Plain Language, Politics and the English Language, Proofreading

Politics and the English Language, George Orwell’s Library

http://tinyurl.com/nsagx

Orwell’s 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language” is a classic. Mr. Orwell actually had six, not five, excellent rules for effective writing. Follow these rules, and you cannot go wrong. -CCE

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.

 

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Best Brief Writing Checklist.

08 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Bad Legal Writing, Brief Writing, Citations, Footnotes, Legal Analysis, Legal Argument, Legal Writing, Legalese, Plain Language, Proofreading, Quotations, Readability, Spell Checking, Statement of Facts, Summary of the Argument

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Brief Writing, Citations, Hon. Patricia M. Wald, Legal Argument, Persuasive Writing, Proofreading

“Briefly Speaking,” Brief Writing – Best Practices, Washington State Court of Appeals, Division I, CLE

 http://tinyurl.com/lsrzxjy

This is the essence of writing a persuasive and winning brief. Each section is important. Ignore the guidance here at your peril.

The icing on the cake is the advice from the Hon. Patricia M. Wald, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, taken from her article, “19 Tips from 19 Years on the Appellate Bench,” The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter 1999).  She is right – this is your opportunity to tell your client’s story. Short and to the point is always more persuasive than long-winded recitations of fact and case law.

Make this your brief writing checklist. -CCE

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Proofreading Checklist – Don’t Miss This One!

27 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Citations, Legal Writing, Proofreading

≈ Comments Off on Proofreading Checklist – Don’t Miss This One!

Tags

Bad Language Brief, Cheat Sheets, Clare Dodd, Proofreading, Spell Checker

Cheat Sheet: We’re Giving Away Our Proofreading Checklist, by Clare Dodd, Bad Language Brief

http://www.badlanguage.net/proofreading-checklist

Proofreading. Not the most exciting job in the world, but an absolutely necessary one.

We’ve covered before what happens when you miss a typo (that’s right, the errorists win). Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any easier to turn out entirely perfect copy. And if you work for a marketing agency, delivering clumsy copy to a client reflects badly on both you and your copywriters.

But you’re in luck: we at Articulate Marketing are sharing our Proofreading checklist with you to make life a little easier. . . . .

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Good Advice On How to Avoid Embarrassing Mistakes In An Appeal.

16 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Appellate Law, Bad Legal Writing, Brief Writing, Case Law, Citations, Citations to the Record, Legal Analysis, Legal Writing, Mandatory Law, Primary Law, Proofreading, Research, Statement of Facts, Texas Supreme Court

≈ Comments Off on Good Advice On How to Avoid Embarrassing Mistakes In An Appeal.

Tags

Appellate Briefs, Appellate Law, Appellate Lawyer, Chad M. Ruback, Citations, Citations to the Record, Hyperbole, Justice Debra Lehrmann, Legal Writing, Proofreading, Statement of Facts, Texas Supreme Court

Common Mistakes Seen in Appellate Petitions and Briefs, by Chad M. Ruback, Appellate Lawyer

http://news.appeal.pro/appeals-to-texas-supreme-court/appellate-petitions-and-briefs/

Mr. Ruback served as a briefing attorney to the Fort Worth Court of Appeals. Here he shares the common mistakes that are normally seen in appellate writing. Because an appellate court never questions witnesses or hears evidence, the written documents submitted by the parties are all it has upon which to base its ruling. Sloppy and lengthy garbled arguments simply will not do. Mr. Ruback’s comments are worth noting.

I would like to add to Mr. Ruback’s list – neglecting to verify the accuracy of the appellate record while it remains in the jurisdiction of the trial court. It is a simple exercise to compare the record compiled by the trial court clerk using the Designation of Record and Counter-Designation of Record to make sure that the record is accurate.

This may seem a waste of time until the appellate record includes a deposition that was never admitted into evidence or a crucial piece of evidence is overlooked by the court clerk who assembled record for the appeal. No one is perfect; mistakes can happen.

Too often, counsel ignore this simple step. Personally, I would make sure the person you send to check the record put the trial exhibits together and/or was part of the trial team. Or to put it another way – how do you explain to a client that you couldl have avoided the appeal’s fatal flaw if you had checked the record before it was sent up on appeal? -CCE

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