The Trial Practice Tips Blog

Want to instantly make your writing look more professional? The secret can be found in Bryan Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage in an entry titled "phrasal adjectives"--

When a phrase functions as an adjective--an increasingly frequent phenomenon in late-20th-century English--the phrase should ordinarily be hyphenated. Most professional writers know this; most nonprofessionals don't.

The primary reason for hyphens is that they prevent miscues and make reading easier and faster. Following are some examples culled from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times:

advance-free loan
bikini-clad blondes
birds-and-bees metaphor
blue-jeans-and-T-shirt crowd
credit-card application
draft-choice compensation

There's more in Garner's book, but this snippet gives you all you need to know. You can find more examples in almost any print publication. By following the phrasal-adjective rule in your own writing, you'll immediately give it a more professional, polished appearance.

Publication Note: Originally published on 11/21/95, but just as true today . . .

My three articles on legal writing, all originally published in the Illinois Bar Journal, continue to get a steady stream of Google-fueled web traffic.

I've reposted these three articles, which are favorites of mine, on my personal website. Follow the links to--

"Five Steps Towards Persuasive Writing,"

"Improve Your Legal Writing with Five Simple Rules," and

"First Drafts Made Easy."

Hundreds of other legal-writing tips can be found here at Trial Practice Tips in the "Legal Writing" category.

Raymond Ward's blog, the (new) legal writer, is billed as "a collection of resources for lawyers and other writers."

And that's exactly what it is--you can always find a useful link.

Ward's latest post, "The Redbook (3d ed.)," concludes this this advice--

[I]f you are serious about being a professional writer (which all lawyers are), then you need the Redbook. The optional part is whether to take a CLE class in how to use it. My opinion: if you are going to use the Redbook, then a little CLE time in how to use it is not a bad investment of time or money.

Having trouble getting started? You'll find a number of tips for writing first drafts in my article "First Drafts Made Easy," originally published in the Illinois Bar Journal.

From J.D. Hull at What About Paris?: "Just Say It: Legal Writing with Soul and Spine," which includes eight useful writing tips from his firm's "Practice Guide for beginning associates, paralegals and assistants."

You can't go wrong adding LawProse Blog to you RSS reader: it's written by Bryan Garner and contains daily usage tips. Check it out.

Here are two legal-writing posts that caught my eye today:

"Inside Straight: Writing For The Trash Or Writing To Be Read," by Mark Herrmann--

A very few lawyers write briefs that stand up and sing on the reader’s desk: The introductory paragraph draws the reader in; the statement of facts tells an interesting story; the argument engagingly (but compellingly) explains an issue, perhaps with a (very light) sense of humor.

"Simple Legal Writing a Newfangled Idea? Hardly," by Matthew Salzwede--

[F]or proof that a simple, direct writing style isn’t a newfangled idea, we need only consult some well-known 19th- and early-20th-Century writers and Supreme Court justices.

Here's a good post by Matthew Salzwedel at Lawyerist.com: "Beware of False Writing Snoots," which begins with a quote from David Foster Wallace--

A SNOOT can be defined as somebody who knows what dysphemism means and doesn’t mind letting you know it. . . . [But the] very most pathetic and dangerous sort of SNOOT [is] the SNOOT Who Is Wrong.”

Salzwedel goes on to complain about mistakes in an article written by a self-described grammar expert.

Biggest mistakes: neglecting phrasal adjectives and recommending the much-derided book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.

I recommend the post, but only after you've read my own paean to phrasal adjectives, "An Easy Tip to Make Your Writing Look More Professional." While you're at it, check out another post from the archives, "A Plethora of Legal Writing Tips."

From Lawyerist.com: "A Brief Guide to Editing Like a Pro," by Chris Bradley--

Read most any published piece of fiction and it’s been revised and edited like mad. The same goes for a lot of other pieces of writing, from essays to literary journalism. There’s a reason for this: putting the words down is relatively easy (presuming the blank page hasn’t scared you frozen from the start). But getting from first draft to final draft is more difficult.

At the full post, Bradley offers a 5-step guide for "editing like a pro," which you should consult if you want to make your legal writing "scream with persuasion and polish and style."

And check out these related posts from the Trial Practice Tips Weblog:

1. "Writing First Drafts"

2. "Self-Editing Tips for Legal Writers"