CBA Record

Choose Your Words with Care Choose your words with care–pick con- crete words, familiar words, and do not use lawyerisms. Concrete words “grip and move your reader’s mind.” Abstract words tend to be vague. Lawyers may want the wiggle room of a vague word, but we should resist for the sake of clarity. Watch out for attractive but vague words like “basis, situation, consideration, facet, character, factor, degree, aspect, and cir- cumstances.” Abstract Words Concrete Words Wydick was a great champion of simple, straightforward language. “Given a choice between a familiar word and one that will send your reader groping for the dictionary, use the familiar word,” wroteWydick. “The reader’s attention is a precious commodity, and you cannot afford to waste it by creat- ing distractions.” Even when using familiar words, prefer the simple to the complex or “stuffy.” Use the nickel word instead of the fifty-cent word. Complex Simple Elucidate Explain Utilize Use Avoid lawyerisms. One of my profes- sors in law school said if you learned the word in law school, don’t use it in your writing. Although an overstatement–some- times we need to write “motion for sum- mary judgment”–the sentiment is sound. Lawyerisms or legalese “give writing a legal smell, but they carry little or no legal sub- stance,” according toWydick. Non-lawyers may not understand them, and they add little or no meaning to the sentence. Lawyerisms to Avoid Aformentioned Whereas In our present circum- stances, the budgetary aspect is a factor which must be taken into con- sideration to a greater degree. Now we must think more about money.

Arrange Your Words with Care In addition to choosing words that are easy to understand, a good writer needs to struc- ture sentences to make it easy on the reader. In the English language, the easiest word order to understand is subject, verb, object. When lawyers separate these key elements, they “test the agility of their readers by making them leap wide gaps between the subject and the verb and between the verb and the object,” according toWydick. Such sentences tend to be unclear and hard to understand. Make it easier on your reader by keeping the subject, verb, and object close together. Gap Gap Closed

writing. If you find that to be the case, edit someone else’s work. Look for some of the errors described above and elsewhere in Wydick’s book. Your practice will pay off. This year I had the pleasure of working with a group of students in an Advanced Legal Writing course, implementing many of Wydick’s ideas over 13 weeks. Every week the stu- dents completed an editing exercise based on one of Wydick’s lessons. Some of them said this constant training improved their writing more than ever before, including one whose note was selected for publica- tion by the law review. We all had a copy of Strunk and White on our shelf in college. Add Plain English for Lawyers to the shelf in your law office. After all, there is a reason it has sold over 1 Million copies.

This agreement, unless revocation has occurred at an earlier date, shall expire on November 1, 2012 the defendant, in ad- dition to having to pay punitive damages, may be liable for plaintiff’s costs and attorney fees.

Unless sooner revoked, this agreement expires on November 1, 2012

The defendant may have to pay plaintiff’s costs and attorney fees in addition to punitive damages.

DEALING WITH HIGH CONFLICT PERSONALITIES IN DIVORCE The Collaborative Law Institute of Illinois presents:

In addition, Wydick advises lawyers to put modifying words close to what they modify. In a mind-bending example, put- ting the word “only” in any of seven places produces different meanings in the follow- ing sentence: “She said that he shot her.” It is generally more clear to put “only” immediately before the word it modifies. If that is still unclear, move it to the begin- ning or end of the sentence. Ambiguous Clear

Friday, November 18, 2016 Cafe La Cave - Des Plaines, IL

Attend this interactive workshop designed to understand and manage high conflict personalities in divorce. Led by lawyer, mediator, therapist, and High Conflict Institute founder Bill Eddy , this program will offer insight into the nature of high conflict people and will provide practical tools for dealing with them. Learn more and register: clioi.wildapricot.org/event-2255044 or call 312-882-8000 IL Attorneys: 6 hours of MCLE credit has been requested.

Lessee shall use the vessel only for recrec- reation. Shares are sold to the public only by the parent corporation.

Lesseemust use the ves- sel for recreation only.

Only the parent corpora- tion sells shares to the public.

Train Yourself to Write Well How do you learn Wydick’s lessons? Prac- tice. Wydick included exercises in each chapter to reinforce his lessons. Sit down and take some time on a regular basis to complete Wydick’s exercises. Sometimes it can be difficult to find errors in our own

Hereinafter Res gestae

CBA RECORD 53