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Long ago, in the land of
manual typewriters, whiteout, and carbon paper,
our memos and briefs looked awful. And when we
went to an appellate court, often we had to have
the briefs typeset and printed. Why? Because the
appellate judges,
who read countless briefs, did not want to read
briefs in Courier or any other monospaced type.
It's too difficult to read. (See Rule 9.)
Now, we can make our
documents look like printing. It's great,
especially when we use a good typeface (Georgia,
Palatino) and good spacing and design. We can
move text around effortlessly and duplicate
clauses in repetitive documents. But new
technology brings new pitfalls.
New
technology, new problems
The ability to cut and paste
allows us to easily move paragraphs around. But
we need to watch out. I've seen them obviously
out of order.
Even worse, some lawyers
start their briefs the same way each time. With
one lawyer's briefs, I know that "In this
case…" starts in the middle of page six.
Everything before that is boilerplate about the
standard of review in a criminal case.
And have you ever been caught
by Spellcheck? Of course - we all have.
Spellcheck is a great tool. But it has its
limitations.
You might mean constitution,
but if you type it wrong, Spellcheck might think
you mean constipation. And don't even
think about the penal system.
For years, the Ohio Judicial
College used envelopes with the return address
Judicial Collage. Collage was spelled
correctly and was alphabetically before college,
so in it went.
I read in a brief that
"the law is defiantly clear…"
Puzzled, I made a few entries and discovered the
genesis: if you mistype definitely as definantly
- a common enough error - Spellcheck will
suggest defiantly.
Just make sure to (1) do the
final edit, and (2) keep your cursor over
skip, not replace. And have someone
else proof your text. Spellcheck is a great tool
for catching typos and misspellings - but there
is no substitute for old-fashioned proofreading.
Earlier this year, California
lawyer Arthur Dudley failed to check his final
draft of an appellate brief after it had been
Spellchecked by someone. He had used sua
sponte a half-dozen times. Sua was
changed to sea and sponte was
changed to sponge. As in, "it is
well settled that a trial court must instruct sea
sponge on any defense." Good thing his
first name isn't Bob.
An error,
and an everyday mistake
And talk about proofreading -
twelve pairs of eyes (at least) missed the
marshal for martial in May's column.
But at least a dozen alert readers caught it.
Paralegal Carolyn Lindsley of
Cincinnati asked me to comment about everyday.
Too often we see everyday used
incorrectly. "This is an everyday occurrence"
is correct. "This occurs everyday" is
wrong. Lawyers improve our lives every day,
not everyday.
Readability
I always show the readability
scores for the column. Statistics for this
column: 11 words per sentence, 6% passive voice,
and grade level 7.6. (See Rules 16 and 17.)
____________________________________
Mark
Painter has served as
a judge on the Ohio
First District Court of Appeals for 11 years, after 13
years on the Hamilton County Municipal Court. He has
taught as an Adjunct Professor at the University of
Cincinnati College of Law since 1990. Judge
Painter has given
dozens of seminars on legal writing. Contact him
through his website, www.judgepainter.org.
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