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Write it right: If you can’t make points with style, at least make them with grammar

By: JESSICA STEPHEN//November 30, 2015//

Write it right: If you can’t make points with style, at least make them with grammar

By: JESSICA STEPHEN//November 30, 2015//

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penLenné Eidson Espenschied resisted writing about grammar.

“I’m not a grammarian; I didn’t study English, even in college,” said Espenschied, who wrote “The Grammar and Writing Handbook for Lawyers.”

But, one day, she knew she had found her calling.

“I was in the law office one day and a partner came storming in, and he was irate because an associate didn’t understand that ‘irregardless’ is not a word. He was absolutely losing it, so I decided that day I would write the grammar book after all because I could see these lawyers needed it.”

The foundation for her future was laid in 1994, when the National Council of Teacher of English recommended deleting grammar from school curricula. Since then, students at all levels have largely lacked formal instruction in grammar.

“Now,” Espenschied said, “those students are emerging from law schools.”

And their lack of grammatical knowledge is raising the collective blood pressure of an entire generation of older attorneys, while leaving less-than-senior associates unaware that they are even a source of such irritation.

“Younger lawyers are not lazy, and they are not careless — all these negative adjectives you could use to describe them,” said Espenschied, a consulting faculty member at Thomson Reuters who offers webinars and instructional videos through the Westlaw legal education center.

“They are products of an educational system that, basically, failed them, in my opinion, because they simply are not being taught grammar.”

And, yet, younger associates are not alone in their inability to grasp grammar. Occasionally, we could all use a little help.

But how do you know if it’s time to brush up?

“If you have a partner or senior counsel who is actually correcting your grammar, you need to go and do some remediation,” Espenschied said.

READING LIST

“The Grammar and Writing Handbook for Lawyers,” by Lenné Eidson Espenschied

“Legal Writing: Getting it Right and Getting it Written,” by Mary Barnard Ray

“Things Your Grammar Never Told You,” by Maurice Scharton and Janice Neuleib

“Legal Writing in Plain English,” by Bryan A. Garner

“Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer,” by Roy Peter Clark

That’s not the only sign.

If your subjects and verbs don’t agree, if you have an incomplete sentence or if you have a comma splice (or wouldn’t know one if your law license depended on it) — you might be making a grammatical gaffe.

Of course, not every error is fatal.

“On a scale of one to 10, not knowing the difference between ‘who’ and ‘whom’ would be a four,” Espenschied said. “Not writing in complete sentences is a 10.”

But even little mistakes make a difference.

“A lawyer loses credibility immediately with clients, colleagues, judges, if you can’t use grammar correctly,” Espenschied said.

Mary Barnard Ray agreed.

“There are certain grammar errors that, if you make them, people think you’re not smart,” said Ray, senior lecturer emerita at the University of Wisconsin Law School and the author of several books on legal writing, among them “The Basics of Legal Writing” and “Legal Writing: Getting it Right and Getting it Written.”

“Things matter in legal writing that don’t matter in other (forms of writing), and a lot of it is about controlling meaning,” Ray said. “Not all documents require controlling meaning, but when you have to control meaning, when you need to avoid having a debate later, your punctuation, your word choice, everything has to be consistent. You can’t create an inaccuracy and you don’t want ambiguity, if you don’t want wiggle room.”

All of this true is particularly true since the interpretation of documents, particularly of contracts, is based on the rules of construction.

“If a provision comes under scrutiny, the court is going to apply the rules of grammar because that is one of the first rules of construction: The lawyer is to apply those rules of grammar when drafting a contract,” Espenschied said.

How can attorneys avoid contract-killing errors?

“You don’t have to remember all the rules of grammar, but you do have to have a flag that goes up to check it,” Ray said. “Then, you need to know to check it and get it right.”

Computer grammar and spell-check programs are often good places to start. But, instead of relying on Word to do the work, Ray and Espenschied suggested attorneys should try to learn why they are making errors.

“Spell checkers, grammar checkers are pretty good, but it’s good to know how to do it yourself,” Ray said. “You just have to know how sentences work, how English works, to be really good at grammar.”

In other instances, it’s best to take the spell checker out of the equation and remove easily confused pairs of words such as: advice, advise; but, butt; facts, fat; trial, trail.

“Take those words out of your spell checker,” Ray said. “It’s so easy to flip them.”

When it comes to sentence structure, Ray suggested keeping it simple.

“Identify the verbs, find the subject, make sure they agree, then go through every document, every email. It’s slow at first, but once you get the hang of it, it goes pretty quickly,” she said.

And it builds a grammatical muscle that no spell check can ever replace.

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