Legal Writing: Is That Judge Smart, or Not?

Does the use of simple words make you seem smarter? That's the topic of two recent blog posts from two different bloggers that I happened upon serendipitously by accident. One of the posts deals with a particular judge, which is the reason for the title of this post--

• "Use plain English, appear smarter (and more persuasive)," by Raymond Ward at the (new) legal wrtier; and
• "Mr. Garner's Simple English v. Judge Selya's Ultracrepidarian Lexiphanicism," by Martin Magnusson at Fairyland Castle.

As for the particular judge, I have no opinion. However, if you choose to take the advice suggested by most writing experts -- shorter sentences, shorter words, simpler writing -- here are a few tools that you can use to assess your own writing style:

• "Test Document Readability and Improve It";
• A tool for calculating your Gunning Fog Index;
• An explanation of various readability indexes.

Comments

[Postergal]

Simple writing would mean more people understanding what you are talking about. You write because you want people not only to read but also comprehend the message you to convey.

[Martin Magnusson]

These tools are all great.

My favorite statistic is the average number of words per sentence.

I find that some of the other stats, like the Gunning Fog and Flesch, are esoteric and ill-suited to legal writing.