Redlines
Law & Culture
Some Pet Peeves (PDF)
Vol. 109 No. 1 (2025) | Celebrating a Decade at DukeEveryone who writes about writing or cares about it is entitled to a few pet peeves. Below are some of mine. I won’t quote real examples for the first two […]
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
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.