LEGAL WRITING

STUDY NOTES 15

Style, Grace, and Eloquence

Every style is good save that which bores. --Voltaire

1. Style is a part of writing itself.

In writing, style is the unique manner you express yourself in writing. Style is not something that can be isolated. It is integral to the writing, ingrained in the language used, the thoughts expressed, and the persuasiveness the writing carries. It is the identifying mark that differentiates your writing from that of another, like your fingerprint or handwriting.

Whatever your personality or talents are, the right way to write is still the one that enables you to say exactly what you want to say, no more and no less. This is the ultimate test of style.

2. Catch the natural rhythm of the spoken word.

Try to get your speaking voice in your writing. In talking, you tend to use short sentences, plain words, active voice, and specific details. 1 Generally, style becomes perfect as it becomes natural – that is, colloquial. 2

We lawyers could save ourselves from many preposterous sentences if we’d just use the mind’s ear a little better. It’s not that good writing is the same as speech. Far from it. Rather, good writing is speech “heightened and polished,” as Judge Jerome Frank once said. You ought to be able, without embarrassment, to say aloud any sentence you’ve written. Your writing ought to sound that natural. If it does, it will read well, too. 3

3. Your style will emerge in due course.

1 Daniel McDonald, The Language of Argument 238 (5th Ed. 1986); Garner, The Winning Brief, 2 Ed., 4292 A.R. Orage (as quoted in Rudolf Flesch, The Art of Readable Writing 210 1949; rep. 1967); Garner, The Winning Brief, op. cit. 4293 Garner, The Winning Brief, op cit., 430

1

When writing, just be yourself. 4 Write in a way that comes easily and naturally to you, using words and phrases that come readily to hand. 5

Do not try to be somebody else when you write. Your style shouldn’t be taller than you are, says Peggy Noonan. 6 As you read the works of others and as you write you will develop over time a writing style that is peculiarly your own. This style will show itself in your choice of words, in the structure of your sentences, in the way you express yourself honestly, sincerely, and clearly in writing.

You will admire the styles of others and will try to pattern your style to theirs. There is no problem with that. But you can never succeed on a complete imitation, because you have your own characteristic way of thinking based on your own knowledge and experience.

So in the end you will have your own style which may have similarities to the style of others. And that is your style.

4. Clarity as the essential ingredient of style.

But not any style will work in legal writing. Legal writing is not primarily a vehicle for creative self-expression; it is a lawyer’s means to specific practical ends. When your client’s money, liberty, or even life is at stake, creative writing is the writing that works. 7

Adds Garner:

Despite the individuality of any given style and its dependence on the personality of the writer, there are certain requisites to the attainment of a good writing style. Clarity is chief among them, as writers since the time of Aristotle have recognized: “Style to be good must be clear, as is proved by the fact that speech that fails to convey a plain meaning will fail to do just what speech has to do.” 8

5. Graceful writing.

Clarity is a good enough aim to meet but you need not stop there. There’s no limit to how far you may wish to go to make the 4 Cf William Zinsser, On Writing Well 186 (5th Ed. 1994); Garner, The Winning Brief, 2d Ed. 4595 Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th Ed., 706 Peggy Noonan, On Speaking Well, 2057 Alan L. Dworsky, The Little Book on Legal Writing, 2nd Ed., 1408 Bryan A. Garner, Garner on Language and Writing (2009), 48

2

document you’re writing worth your reader’s time. This extra effort is shown in your careful choice of words and in the smooth flow of thoughts as they move across the sentences, paragraphs and throughout your writing. Your reader, say, the judge, may not get hooked to your side that easily, but he or she will still be charmed by the forceful and persuasive quality of your document.

More than captivating the mind, your writing touches the reader’s spirit at just the perfect moment. That’s graceful writing.

6. Aspire for eloquence.

Eloquence is more than clarity and grace. Walker Gibson wrote in his book Literary Minds and Judicial Style:

Wherever he starts, whatever trivial item of human experience he initially confronts, the legal writer can make a stab at eloquence. If Holmes was right, that ‘a man may live greatly in law as well as elsewhere’: then the consequence is that he must write greatly, for in law as well as in literature there is no other meaning of greatness. 9

Eloquence does not arise from the use of esoteric words, labored phrases or a gaudy embellishment of words, but from the capacity of your writing to awe by its surprising mixture of simplicity and majesty. 10

7. The choice is ours.

Our complaint or motion or arguments can reach for the heights. Or, they can just be as indistinguishable as a nameless face in a crowd, rushed jobs that strike the reader not with awe but plain boredom. The choice is mine – and yours.

8. The best legal document is yet to be written.

9 Bryan A. Garnre, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, 518-9; italics added10 There are two sorts of eloquence; the one indeed scarce deserves the name of it, which consists chiefly in laboured and polished periods, an over-curious and artificial arrangement of figures, tinselled over with a gaudy embellishment of words, . . . The other sort of eloquence is quite the reverse to this, and which may be said to be the true characteristic of the holy Scriptures; where the eloquence does not arise from a laboured and far-fetched elocution, but from a surprising mixture of simplicity and majesty. Laurence Sterne

3

Someone has said that the greatest thoughts of humanity have been expressed. One can say, from one’s perspectives of faith, that the greatest man has been born, the greatest story told, and the greatest book written.

The greatest thoughts still have to find their expression in the present and the future of humanity. Human conduct encounters the law in countless ways, giving rise to problems calling for solutions – and lawyers to help along with the skills they could muster, including writing.

Truly the world still awaits the greatest piece of legal writing.

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. -- Vladimir Nabakov

Further Reading

Stephen V. Armstrong and Timothy P. Terrell, Understanding “Style” in Legal Writing

4