Redlines
Law & Culture
What’s With the Repetitious Citing? (PDF)
Vol. 108 No. 3 (2025) | Problem-Solving Courts
Give Bullet Points a Try (PDF)
Vol. 108 No. 1 (2024) | Harnessing AI for JusticeWith help from the library staff at Cooley Law School, I conducted an experiment. Randomly take 100 federal cases, 50 from the courts of appeals and 50 from the district […]
Law & Culture
Add punch with an extra-short sentence (or a fragment) (PDF)
Vol. 107 No. 3 (2024) | JustitiaAn occasional extra-short sentence or fragment can serve various purposes. Most obviously, it can provide variety and emphasis. It can also be useful for breaking up a long sentence, setting up a conclusion, linking to a new topic—any number of things, really.
Law & Culture
Minimize prepositional phrases. Question every of. (Part 2, PDF)
Vol. 107 No. 2 (2023) | Generative AI in the CourtsIn the previous column, I said that unnecessary prepositional phrases are perhaps the single biggest cause of sentence-level verbosity in legal writing […]
Law & Culture
Minimize prepositional phrases. Question every of. (Part 1; PDF)
Vol. 107 No. 1 (2023) | Toward Fairer, Quicker, Cheaper Litigation
Law & Culture
The Case for Contractions (PDF)
Vol. 106 No. 3 (2023) | Forging New TrailsIn a very short browse on Westlaw, I found some sentences that, in my view, would be improved by contractions: […]
Law & Culture
Taking aim (again) at multiword prepositions (PDF)
Vol. 106 No. 2 (2022) | Losing faith?Since I didn’t wipe them out the first time (Summer 2018), I am reloading. Multiword prepositions—also called compound or complex or phrasal prepositions—are among the most noxious and pervasive small-scale faults in legal writing. […]
Law & Culture
Another kick at dates and procedural detail (PDF)
Vol. 103 No. 1 (2019) | Navigating Rough SeasThis isn’t the first time I’ve gone after unnecessary dates and procedural detail. (See the Autumn 2017 and Summer 2018 columns.) And it probably won’t be the last.
Law & Culture
The Wonderfully Versatile Em-Dash (PDF)
Vol. 106 No. 1 (2022) | Necessarily EngagedWe all know that legal writing could benefit from more periods. A strong contender for the second most neglected punctuation mark in legal writing is the em-dash, the long dash.