Writing

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I never thought I would say this, but my favorite book this year is about punctuation. That’s right. Punctuation! The book is Making a Point: The Pernickety Story of English Punctuation, by David Crystal, and it’s well worth reading.

It’s an enjoyable romp through the English language, with limited attention to writing in other languages as well. (I just placed something in a German English-language publication and discovered that Germans don’t know how to “correctly” use quotation marks.)

This isn’t a rule book; Crystal talks about current usage, including areas where the “experts” disagree. (Oxford comma, anyone?) But he also covers the history—how the use of punctuation has evolved over time. One of the book’s recurring themes is how two functions of punctuation–clarifying the writer’s meaning and providing cues to speakers–can sometimes be at odds.

The history is fascinating. I have to admit that, after reading this book and seeing what excellent writers have done in the past, it’s harder to argue for a prescriptive position. I don’t always agree with Crystal’s position on disputed issues, but his case is always cogent.

Crystal covers all the major punctuation marks: , , ;, :, . . . , ., and…

This week I thanked the law review editors at the West Virginia Law Review for their hard work on my forthcoming article. They seemed truly grateful for the thanks, which was well deserved, and it made me think that I should thank law review editors more often.

Law review editors put in a tremendous amount of time working on our articles, often well after-hours given all of their other commitments. Even when the process is frustrating, I think we need to be thankful and professional. Also, given that I have had a few rough editing experiences, I now state my preferences up front, which (at least this time) led to better results. 

Somewhat related, over at PrawfsBlawg, Andrew Chongseh Kim has a couple posts on the law review process: one on exploding offers and one on peer review of law review articles.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with exploding offers, and I actually think more law reviews should use them. The submission game incentivizes submission to many journals and trading up multiple times. This process wastes an incredible amount of student editor time and they have every right to effectively shut down the expedite process.

As I have…

I detest bad legal writing. (I detest bad writing of all kinds, but this is a law blog, so I’ll limit my rant to legal writing.) I don’t like to read it and I hate it when I (sometimes?) write it. I’m not a great writer, but I appreciate lawyers and legal scholars who can write clear, concise prose. Unfortunately, although writing is an essential element of legal practice, many lawyers do not write well.

If you care about legal writing, and you should, the Scribes Journal of Legal Writing recently published a short piece you might want to read: Legal-Writing Myths, by Judge Gerald Lebovits.

I knew after reading the first paragraph that I was going to like Judge Lebovits’s article. His first sentence rejects the prohibition on beginning a sentence with a conjunction. His second sentence rejects the prohibition on ending a sentence with a preposition. And [remember his first sentence?] his third sentence rejects the prohibition on splitting infinitives.

I was not disappointed as I read the rest of the article. In just a few pages, Judge Lebovits artfully rebuts ten myths of legal writing.

My favorite myths:

  • “Writing a lengthy brief is harder and takes

…

One of the hardest things for me as a writer is knowing when I’m done. September’s Harvard Business Review (p. 128) has a great quote from Salman Rushdie on that question. They asked him how he knows he’s finished a book. He says:

“There’s a point at which you’re not making it better; you’re just making it different. You have to be good at recognizing that point.”