The New York Times’ Absolutely Imbecilic Parenthetical

Today’s New York Times has an interesting article about the carrot cake at Rikers Island. It’s a charming story—complete with the prison's special recipe (25 pounds sugar, 3 gallons vegetable oil, 25 pounds flour . . . ).

Those are some astounding quantities of sugar, vegetable oil, and flour! But what really made my jaw drop was the Times’ imbecilic clarification as to whom they interviewed at Rikers Island:

“I myself was kind of impressed with the size of the machines,” said Larry King, who is serving an eight-month sentence for drug possession.

Mr. King (not the CNN host) had no previous kitchen experience before he began working in the bakery two months ago. He earns 39 cents an hour, which he uses to buy toothpaste and soap at the jail commissary.

Not the CNN host? Seriously?

Does the New York Times think that we’re incapable of making reasonable assumptions? If the real Larry King were in Rikers Island, slinging cake batter for thirty-nine cents an hour so he could afford toothpaste, wouldn’t that be the story—much as it’s interesting that Rikers Island inmates bake carrot cake?

Without the not the CNN host parenthetical, nobody, nobody, nobody would ever have thought that America’s premier broadcast interviewer is incarcerated at Rikers Island.

People are smarter than that.

I’m looking at you, editors of the New York Times.

Congressman Weiner Needs to Switch to Decaf

Congressman Anthony Weiner doesn’t realize that speaking extremely loudly is not the same thing as speaking well. My favorite moment of his rant is the ironic deliciousness in which he screams, “The gentleman thinks that if he gets up and yells, he’s going to intimidate people into believing he’s right! He is wrong!”

But what Congressman Weiner doesn’t realize is that Congressman Weiner is the one who’s getting up and yelling to intimidate people. And he is wrong!

Hat tip to a colleague who forwarded me this awesome, awesome video.

Liaise Is Not a Word

I’ve recently noticed that American lawyers are using the nonword liaise more frequently. I’m suddenly hearing it every day in sentences like, “I’ll liaise with opposing counsel on their discovery requests.”

While liaison is proper word, liaise is just a bureaucratic backformation. Instead of liaising with opposing counsel, why don’t you just talk with opposing counsel?

William Safire was right almost twenty years ago:

Because we knock the nonce, usage mavens look askance at back-formations like liaise: instead of discreetly developing a deliciously dangerous liaison, too many promiscutarians freely liaise with anybody they want to hop into communication with. We heap ridicule on the new word to see if it will slink away; if it sticks around and fills a linguistic need, we will eventually liaise with it.

Liaise doesn’t fit any need. I hope it doesn’t catch on here in America.

Spelling Fail

Once, I didn’t pay attention and let spell check replace indemnitor with inseminator. But this billboard makes me feel better about it. Hat tip to Irish I’s.

Getting What You Want

Persuasive people know the difference between requests and declarations. Do you?

Are You Experienced?

CVS Employees Bring the Snark

Skilling v. United States

It’s unrelated to legal writing, but you should check out my recent post at ACSblog.

Save the Words

This is endless fun.

Calling Out Full-Service Solutions Providers

Jason Fried has a terrific article about crappy business writing In the May issue of Inc. Here’s a taste test:

One of my favorite phrases in the business world is full-service solutions provider. A quick search on Google finds at least 47,000 companies using that one. That's full-service generic. There’s more. Cost effective end-to-end solutions brings you about 95,000 results. Provider of value-added services nets you more than 600,000 matches. Exactly which services are sold as not adding value?

Who writes this stuff? Worse, who reads it and approves it? What does it say when tens of thousands of companies are saying the same things about themselves?

Your Associates’ Competency Is Not a Selling Point!

I recently attended an award dinner at which the speaker explained that as a law-firm partner, the award recipient consistently demanded competency from his associates.

Of course, while competence refers to the ability to do something, competency refers to being minimally competent to stand trial. 

So the speaker was effectively saying that as a law-firm partner, the award recipient insisted that his associates neither be so mentally retarded nor so mentally ill that a court would rule that they cannot stand trial.

I’m No Longer “Hungry”

Good writers, legal and otherwise, avoid quotation marks that lead to “misunderstandings.”

For Fox Sake

A clever sign in Oxfordshire advises motorists to slow down for the sake of foxes.

  
Hat tip to Shakesville, via one of my law-school amigos.

What Happens without Spell-Check

Analog writing systems don’t have a spell-check feature. And that can lead to tragedies like this. 

Hat tip to the Grammar Blog.

Another Cheap but Effective Marketing Idea

The Legal Marketing Blog has a great post entitled 10 Cheap But Effective Marketing Tips For Today’s Realities. I would add one tip: Buy a copy of Garner’s Modern American Usage and refer to it every day. Your written work will improve dramatically. People will notice your clean and correct prose. Cheap. Effective. Easy.

Respect Are-Country

The Christian Science Monitor has a great photo feature entitled Copyediting Tea Party Protest Signs.

It brings the snark in a big way. (Hat tip to Bad Language.)

Now That’s What I Call a Sentence!

Lowering the Bar has a great post about the erstwhile longest known sentence in a legal document. Here it is:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“CAFC”) having misread this court’s opinion herein sub nom. Caribbean Ispat Ltd. v. United States, 29 CIT 329, 366 F.Supp.2d 1300 (2005), to the effect that it “prohibited” the defendant International Trade Commission (“ITC”) from “considering the effects of LTFV imports of non-CBERA countries when it assessed imports from Trinidad and Tobago” [Caribbean Ispat Ltd. v. United States, 450 F.3d 1336, 1341 (Fed.Cir. 2006)] and having thereupon vacated this court’s judgment of dismissal and remanded the matter for the ITC to “make a specific causation determination and in that connection . . . directly address whether [other LTFV imports and/or fairly traded imports] would have replaced [Trinidad and Tobago’s] imports without any beneficial effect on domestic producers”, id., quoting from Bratsk Aluminum Smelter v. United States, 444 F.3d 1369, 1373 (Fed.Cir. 2006); and this court having entered an order of remand in haec verba, 30 CIT 1519 (2006); and the ITC in compliance with that order having determined that an industry in the United States is not materially injured or threatened with material injury by reason of imports of certain wire rod from Trinidad and Tobago that is sold in the United States at less than fair value; and this court having affirmed that determination sub nom. Mittal Steel Point Lisas Ltd. v. United States, 31 CIT 1041, 495 F.Supp.2d 1374 (2007), and entered an amended final judgment of dismissal; and the intervenor defendants having appealed therefrom and induced the CAFC to opine, among other things, Mittal Steel Point Lisas Ltd. v. United States, 542 F.3d 867, 877 (Fed.Cir. 2008), that it does

not regard the decision in Bratsk as requiring the Commission to presume that producers of non-subject goods would have replaced the subject goods if the subject goods had been removed from the market. Although we stated there, and reaffirm here, that the Commission has the responsibility to consider the causal relation between the subject imports and the injury to the domestic injury, that responsibility does not translate into a presumption of replacement without benefit to the domestic industry[]

and also that the “problem may stem from a lack of sufficient clarity in [its] prior opinion”, 542 F.3d at 879; and the CAFC having determined to vacate yet again this court’s judgment of dismissal, notwithstanding the ITC’s “scrupulous attention to the terms of this court’s remand instructions”, id., and remand the matter yet again “for further consideration of the material injury issue in light of [it]s opinion” and also “for further proceedings with respect to the threat of material injury”, id.; and the mandate of the CAFC having issued in regard thereto; and the Clerk of this court having reopened this matter on March 24, 2010; Now therefore, after due deliberation, it is ORDERED that this matter be, and it hereby is, remanded to the defendant International Trade Commission, which may have until June 25, 2010 to attempt to comply with the CAFC’s reasoning, as set forth in its foregoing, more recent opinion, and to report to this court any results of this mandated remand; and it is further hereby ORDERED that the other parties hereto have until July 30, 2010 to file comments on any such results.

That’s one sentence, people! Although Lowering the Bar has identified a purportedly longer sentence, I don’t think statutes count.

Purposely Incomplete Sentences

You’ll almost never come across fragmentary sentences in legal writing. And that’s a shame—fragments are a powerful rhetorical tool. If lawyers were to realize this, they would invigorate lackluster prose with well-placed fragments.

If you’re skeptical, just look at how well Ross Douthat moves his argument along with several punchy verbless sentences that begin with or:

In a way, the muzzling of “South Park” is no more disquieting than any other example of Western institutions’ cowering before the threat of Islamist violence. It’s no worse than the German opera house that temporarily suspended performances of Mozart’s opera “Idomeneo” because it included a scene featuring Muhammad’s severed head. Or Random House’s decision to cancel the publication of a novel about the prophet’s third wife. Or Yale University Press’s refusal to publish the controversial Danish cartoons ... in a book about the Danish cartoon crisis. Or the fact that various Western journalists, intellectuals and politicians — the list includes Oriana Fallaci in Italy, Michel Houellebecq in France, Mark Steyn in Canada and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands — have been hauled before courts and “human rights” tribunals, in supposedly liberal societies, for daring to give offense to Islam.

The effect is brilliant. Just brilliant.

Legal-Writing Lessons Learned from Trashy Romance Novels

The next time you come across a trashy romance novel, look to see how many spaces are between sentences.

That’s right: one.

But you don’t have to confine yourself to trashy romance novels. Look at any book on your shelf. Look at In Cold Blood. One space. Look at The Sound and the Fury. One space. Look at The New York Times. One Space. Look at The New Yorker. One Space. Look at any publication you want. Hell, even look at The Bluebook. One space.

The Prime Minister’s Preprepared Jokes

I think that David Cameron is an eloquent voice for the opposition party. So I was surprised to hear him use an odd nonword during Prime Minister’s Questions:

If the Prime Minister is going to have preprepared jokes, I think they ought to be a bit better than that one.

See it here (at approximately 6:30).

If Mr. Cameron is going to add new words to the Engligh language, they ought to be a bit better than preprepared. That word has no right to exist. Even dictionary.com agrees!

I’m not even sure what preprepared might mean . . . to make something ready before making it ready? I guess only Mr. Cameron knows.

Even the Wall Street Journal Can See Obama’s Halo

Graffito

I love Guy Kawasaki, because everything that he writes is terrific.

Well, almost everything. I recently came across usage in one of his books that made me shudder:

I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck.
—graffito in Los Angeles

Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start 137 (2004).

Graffito is, as Russell Lynes once remarked, a frightfully pretentious word. You should only use it if you want to give the impression of being a literato. Otherwise, use graffiti as both singular and plural, just like normal people do.

Ho Activities with Ho Tendencies

Some lawyers skip the footnotes in judicial opinions. And in so doing, they miss gems like this:

The trial transcript quotes Ms. Hayden as saying Murphy called her a snitch bitch “hoe.” A “hoe,” of course, is a tool used for weeding and gardening. We think the court reporter, unfamiliar with rap music (perhaps thankfully so), misunderstood Hayden’s response. We have taken the liberty of changing “hoe” to “ho,” a staple of rap music vernacular as, for example, when Ludacris raps “You doin’ ho activities with ho tendencies.”

United States v. Murphy, 406 F.3d 857, 859 n.1 (7th Cir. 2005).

Redefining Definition

The New York Times recently ran a terrific little piece about dictionaries. Erin McKean wrote it, and although it’s a plug for wordnik, you should still check it out. Here’s a taste test:

Without privileging definitions, dictionary-making would involve more curation and less abridgment, less false precision and more organic understanding. If we stop pretending definitions are science, we can enjoy them as a kind of literature — think of them as extremely nerdy poems — without burdening them with tasks for which they are unsuited.

You can get more of Ms. McKean here. She’s awesome.

The Future Will Be Very Interesting

A new decade is here, and I can’t wait to discover what technologies it will bring.

I mean, just look at what America’s most well-known scientist found “very interesting” a few decades ago:

There is a popular game, sometimes called Pong, which simulates on a television screen a perfectly elastic ball bouncing between two surfaces. Each player is given a dial that permits him to intercept the ball with movable “racket.” Points are scored if the motion to the ball is not intercepted by the racket. The game is very interesting.

Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden 225 (1977).

Is there any doubt that the next ten years’ technology will revolutionize the practice of law? Not for me.

What’s in Santa’s Bag This Year? Snootitude!

Today, I received an interesting plea from Bryan Garner. He wants me to buy lots of copies of Garner’s Modern American Usage to send a message to bookstore chains who don’t stock his book:

I have a favor to ask of you as a loyal reader: In the next few hours or days, would you please go to www.amazon.com or www.bn.com and buy one or more copies of the new third edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage as holiday presents? In fact, keep this gift possibility in mind through the end of the year, won't you?

I need your help in sending a message to the major bookstore chains: they’re not stocking the book because they’ve told Oxford University Press that they consider usage guides a “defunct category.” It’s maddeningly unbelievable. Please help me show them that they’re stupendously wrong.

I suspect that many of the snoots who are hardcore enough to buy GMAU as a Christmas gift would welcome its becoming harder to obtain, because that makes the club to which it affords access more exclusive.

But I also think that Mr. Garner’s book is what Guy Kawasaki might call “evangelist-worthy”:

A great product incites you to action. It is so deep, indulgent, complete, and elegant that it compels people to tell others about it. They’re not necessarily an employee or shareholder of the company that produces it. They’re bringing the good news to help others, not themselves.

Guy Kawasaki, Reality Check 188 (2008).

So while I may not buy you a copy of GMAU, I earnestly recommend that you buy one for yourself.

True Believers

I never rely on google to solve my usage dilemmas. And neither should you.

At Seth’s Blog, Mr. Godin unwittingly makes the case for keeping authoritative reference books on a nearby bookshelf:

The internet has amplified the volume of the true believers, the defenders of any faith.

If you’re into high end stereo, it’s far easier to find strident voices in defense of $100,000 stereos than ever before. If you have strong views on health care (either side) it’s not hard to find the orthodox and articulate believers. It’s not just specialty magazines or conferences any longer. The true believers are in our faces every day.

When you lead a tribe, the volume and accessibility of the true believers is a good thing. They’re easy to find and they maintain order and create a culture for the group you’re leading.

The problem is that these loud voices may be loud, but they might not be right.

You can read the rest of Seth’s post here.

Now go buy The Chicago Manual of Style so that you can use google for what it’s meant: stalking former colleagues.

Strong Verbs

Over at Bright Hub, Trent Lorcher has an interesting post about strong verbs. Strong verbs invigorate prose, as Mr. Lorcher demonstrates:

Instead of talking loudly, I should shout. Instead of walking proudly, I should strut. Instead of resting calmly, I should relax. Instead of hitting hard, I should wallop. Instead of writing long windedly, I should elaborate.

My Recent Post at ACSblog

I recently wrote a post about Maryland v. Shatzer for ACSblog. It has nothing to do with language, though, so readers of this blog might be uninterested.

Pleading Innocent

I’ve always wondered where the odd phrase to plead innocent comes from. Almost everybody knows that criminal defendants don’t plead innocent; they plead not guilty. But I still encounter the phrase fairly regularly, particular among nonlawyers.

Today’s Garner’s Usage Tip explains the common-sense origin of this phrase:

[N]ewspaper writers live in perpetual fear of the word not either being dropped by a printer or being changed from not to now. Therefore, whenever possible, they shy away from the word not, even at the expense of strict accuracy.

Although I still think to plead innocent is an imprecise, inaccurate phrase, I get a kick out of journalists who editor-proof their copy.

Obama’s Cue Cards

Our Monstrously Evil and Utterly Indecent Legal System

An enormity is something monstrously evil, an outrage and utter violation of all decency. So the jacket copy on Lawrence Friedman’s American Law surprised me:

The proportions of our legal system and the enormity of its social impact beg several questions[.]

(Emphasis added).

This book is no polemic against American law, so I can only presume that the writer meant to use enormousness, which means vastness or immensity. And the proportions of our legal system don’t beg questions; they present questions. More about begging questions here.

Now That’s What I Call a Usage Panel!

At a recent bookfair, I picked up—for one dollar—a copy of the second edition of the Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage.

Its all-star usage panel includes:

• Isaac Asimov
• Saul Bellow
• Art Buchwald
• John Ciardi
• Walter Cronkite
• William O. Douglas
• S. I. Hayakawa
• Anthony Lewis
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan
• George Plimpton
• Daniel Schorr
• Barbara Tuchman
• Herman Wouk
• William Zinsser
  

Outstanding!

Appellate Courts Don’t Provide Affirmations

The other day I overheard a lawyer talking about an appellate court’s affirmation of a trial-court ruling. The lawyer must not have known that there’s a big difference between an affirmance and an affirmation.

When an appellate court upholds a lower court’s judgment, that’s an affirmance.

When Stuart Smalley asserts that, gosh darn it, people like him, that's an affirmation.

Hartford Mayor Arranged On Extortion Charge

I thought that the mayor of Hartford would be arraigned today, that he would be brought into court to answer a criminal charge.

But I was wrong. Mayor Perez was instead put into a neat, attractive order, like a bouquet of exquisite flowers.

From the Connecticut Law Tribune:

Hartford Mayor Arranged On Extortion Charge

Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez and three others charged in a corruption investigation last week have made a brief appearance before a state judge. Perez, former Hartford state Rep. Abraham Giles, Hartford City Councilwoman Veronica Airey-Wilson and Farmington businessman Carlos Lopez did not speak Tuesday during their arraignments before Hartford Superior Court Judge Glenn Woods. Perez and Giles are charged with attempted extortion and conspiracy for allegedly trying to extort $250,000 from a real estate developer. They deny the charges. Airey-Wilson is charged with tampering with evidence, and Lopez is charged with three counts of fraudulent voting. They are due back in court on Friday. – Associated Press

(Emphasis added).

I’ll Try to Pend Passing Judgment on This “Word”

Pending comes from the French word pendant, which means “hanging.” As we all know, it’s an adjective that means “awaiting decision or settlement.”

But today, I saw an appellate court back-form this adjective into a verb:

A condition precedent is a fact or event that must exist or take place before there is a right to performance. The nonoccurrence of such a condition pends the obligor’s duty to perform on the ground that it is not due as long as the condition has not occurred.

Zivic v. Zivic, 26 Conn. App. 5, 9 (1991) (emphasis added).

A Practice I Recommend to Many Others

Another gem from Rep. Frank:

I have looked carefully at the deliberations we have seen about the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch issue. And our colleagues on the Government Reform Committee have had a number of hearings on that. I must say one of the most interesting and potentially instructive things that came out [of] it was Secretary Paulson’s explaining that he could not produce e-mails, because he has never sent them. That is a practice I recommend to many others. I follow it myself.

Some Wisdom of Barney Frank, 12 Green Bag 2D 374 (2009).

That’s How I Roll

Hat tip to the (new) legal writer.

Is a Poster Boy a Poster Person?

The lawyer wanted to avoid the snares of sexism. The lawyer didn’t want to say to his audience:

He’s the poster boy for his organization.

This statement implies that only boys are members of the organization. So the lawyer said:

He’s the poster person for his organization.

The audience members were puzzled. They had never heard of poster people!

The lawyer could have avoided sexism and still not sounded ridiculous:

He’s the poster child for success.

Confrontation Claus

This brought a smile to my face.

Another Day, Another Awesome Protest Sign

Get a brain, morans.

Bryan Garner Is Wrong about Espresso

The third edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage arrived today.

The latest iteration of this brilliant book has a lot going in its favor:

• a terrific new essay on the language wars: The Ongoing Struggles of Garlic-Hangers;
• the Language-Change Index, which describes how widely accepted linguistic innovations are;
  
• lots of new entries; and
  
• it’s blue, not red
  

But the new edition is not without faults. The entry for espresso makes me crazy:

(= a specially prepared coffee through which steam is forced under high pressure) is so spelled—not expresso.

Of course, espresso is made by forcing water—not steam—through coffee.

Three Large Military Transport Airplanes for $674?

I admit it. I brood over my writing. I worry that I will commit careless errors. I torment myself with the thought that my writing will come across as careless, stupid, or ignorant. Or maybe even all of these!

But this morning’s New York Times editorial page made me feel much better about myself:

[The House defense appropriations bill] . . . include[s] more than $400 million for the new presidential helicopter, $560 million for an alternate engine for another new fighter plane (the F-35), $674 for three extra C-17 transport planes and an additional $603 million for the F-18 fighter jet program.

(Emphasis added).

Who knew that C-17 Globemasters costs less than $225 each? That’s cheaper than a Walmart bicycle!

The online version of the editorial has been fixed.

Lobbyest Payoffs?

Today’s New York Times has an interesting article about flagging support for President Obama’s proposed health care reforms. The article claims that opponents of these reforms have spent nine million dollars on TV spots. But the accompanying photo demonstrates that these opponents haven’t spent a penny spellchecking their signs.

Oh Snap!

Dismissive putdowns are so much better when they come from the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit:

Like bumper-to-bumper traffic, this argument goes nowhere.

La Plante v. American Honda Motor Co., 27 F.3d 731, 745 (1st Cir. 1994).

It’s Official!

Over at You Don’t Say, Mr. McIntyre has a wonderful post about stale writing techniques.

My favorite:

It’s official means that some piece of information has been confirmed — meaning that you are telling the reader something already widely known. Usually readers expect a story to tell them things they don’t already know.

Fourth Edition GMAU

The fourth edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage will be released in about one month. You should preorder a copy today.

A Palin-esque Power to Polarize?

The dining section of yesterday’s New York Times had an interesting article about pizza. This sentence really caught my eye:

It’s scrutinized and fetishized, with a Palin-esque power to polarize.

I wonder whether a casual reader fifty years in the future will appreciate what a brilliant turn of phrase this is.

This Restaurant Will Give You Gas

Hat tip to GrammarBlog.

A Fourth of July Observation

Serious writers detest nominalizations, also known as buried verbs. These verbs are buried because they’ve been changed into nouns. Buried verbs lead to abstract, obtuse prose.

Take, for instance, this sentence:

After the transformation of nominalizations, the text has fewer abstractions, so readers’ visualization of the discussion finds enhancement.

When the buried verbs transform into real verbs, the sentence becomes much more lively:

Uncovering buried verbs makes writing more concrete so readers can more easily see what you’re talking about.

See Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage 117 (2d ed. 2003).

But on the Fourth of July, I can’t resist pointing out that buried verbs are not always inferior. I’m thinking of a set of buried verbs with which all Americans are familiar:

No taxation without representation.

No writer can “unbury” these two verbs without destroying the soul of this slogan.

Powerpoint Will Never Be the Same

I recently read Presentation Zen and advise you to do the same. If you give powerpoint presentations, following its simple rules will make you a superstar.

This book has changed my (professional) life.

What the Constitution Means

The last sentence of Adam Liptak’s New York Times article says it all:

The Constitution, it turns out, means what Justice Kennedy says it means.

“Don’t Tell Me That Democrats Won’t Defend This Country!”

This Sunday, Mr. Safire had a terrific column about straw men.

The column quotes Mr. Obama’s nomination-acceptance braggadocio: “Don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country!”

Mr. Safire argues—correctly—that such arguments are misleading:

Who was telling him that? To be sure, his opponents were claiming that a Republican administration would be stronger on defense, but nobody was telling him or the voters that Democrats preferred abject surrender.

Lawyers make straw-man arguments all the time. In fact, I bet Obama learned to do it from being a lawyer.

And don’t tell me that I’m a mindless dullard who doesn’t know what he’s talking about!

Writing Is a Sacred Act

I recently picked up a copy of the third edition of A Writer’s Companion on half.com for seventy-five cents (plus shipping and handling, of course).

I love this book. Here’s one of my favorite lines:

In some ancient societies, writing was considered a sacred act because it had so much authority in the community, and thus only priests were allowed to do it. In its various forms, writing is still the strongest cement of the social order.

How to Write a Powerful Opening Sentence

From the front page of today’s New York Times:

The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked “highly confidential,” that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation’s civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.

DEAR JUDGES

Yesterday’s edition of Courtoons is genius.

Hat tip to the (new) legal writer.

Has President Obama Tapped Judge Sotomayor?

John McIntyre makes a good point: there must be a better way to discuss President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court than with a verb that suggests that President Obama has had sex with her.

To select is a much better word choice. It adds clarity and dignity, at a cost of two letters. Surely these two letters are worth it.

It Upsets Me Because I’m an English Teacher

This is a terrific cartoon.

Few in Number

I often hear lawyers talking about things that are few in number.

• Clients who are not cost-cutting are few in number.
• Opportunities for young attorneys to get into court are few in number.
• Associate openings at large law firms are few in number.
  

Few in number is a terribly redundant phrase.

Lawyers should follow Samuel Johnson’s advice and “avoid ponderous ponderosity.” While we’re at it, let’s stop using other redundant phrases like:

• basic fundamentals
• future plans
• absolute necessity
• mix together
  

Vile and Unspeakable Blasphemy

A colleague recently forwarded me A. O. Scott’s review of Angels & Demons. It’s a masterpiece of snootiness:

I have not read the novel by Dan Brown on which this film . . . is based. I have come to believe that to do so would be a sin against my faith, not in the Church of Rome but in the English language, a noble and beleaguered institution against which Mr. Brown practices vile and unspeakable blasphemy.