• SPOGG (The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar) collects a list of links to language essays by Seattle lawyer Robert Cumbow. I haven’t had a chance to read all of the essays, but from what little I’ve read so far, I’d say they’re worth checking out.


• The unabashed Howard Bashman reports “Commas key in battle to control Philly newspapers?” Howard links to an AP story, according to which the issue is whether a modifying clause set off by commas is restrictive or nonrestrictive. If that makes your grammarian’s heart go pitter-patter, you know where to click.


• The Wall Street Journal Law Blog reports on Bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel, a writing stickler who isn’t afraid to whack lawyers upside the head with Strunk & White.


• Evan Schaeffer reminds us of an excellent article he wrote a while back on how to overcome writer’s block and get that first draft done.

Writing guru Roy Peter Clark has come up with a great word for the mental work done before putting fingers to keyboard: prevision. It’s the first of three stages in the writing process: prevision, vision, revision. Prevision is “[w]hat to call that period of mental and physical rehearsal that precedes coming to a full understanding of what your story is really about—before you truly ‘see’ the story.”

Me, I spend a majority of my briefwriting time in the prevision stage: digesting the record, researching the law, looking for what pop-song writers call the hook. Why? Because before you hit the road, you’d better figure out where you’re going.

Ernie the Attorney had an interesting post yesterday asking how the headnotes in West digests encourage lawyers to write long-winded sentences. The answer: the headnote authors follow the senseless convention of trying to cram all the pertinent information into one sentence.

Unfortunately, lawyers who read these headnotes often imitate their style. In my world of appellate practice, this pernicious influence most often manifests itself in the issue statements in briefs. You briefwriters out there, please do this: Before you write another long, convoluted, one-sentence issue statement, check the applicable procedural rules to see whether you’re required to do that. If not, then please feel liberated to write a multi-sentence issue statement. Put your premises in the form of declarative sentences. End with a one-clause question, which should have one of these — ? — as its ending punctuation. It’s not hard, folks. All you have to do is write like a human being.

This blog’s official position on split infinitives is that they’re okay. The Star Trek catch phrase — “to boldly go” — is A-okay with us. But please, please don’t use your freedom from the no-split-infinitives superstition to write a sentence like this:

Is it kosher for a law enforcement agency to, pursuant to a lawfully granted search warrant, search your Gmail account without telling you?

I found this on, of all places, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog. As my high-school Spanish and Latin teacher, Fr. Gregor, would say, “Et tu, Brute?” The problem isn’t the split; it’s that the split is a chasm — a seven-word something-or-other phrase interrupting another phrase.