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Legal Writing

Daily Writing Tips

Are you trying to improve your writing skills? If so Daily Writing Tips is the right place for you. Featuring daily tips about grammar, spelling, punctuation, copywriting and more!

Post Frequency: 3.6/day

Last Entry: November 02, 2020 at 06:34:48

December 2008: Thanks To Our Sponsors

Posted on December 04, 2008
Time to write a post thanking our sponsors (they make this blog possible after all!). They are all great companies that provide useful services for writers, freelancers and bloggers. Make sure to check them out.

Short Story Competition 2: Send Us Your 1,000 Word Story

Posted on December 03, 2008
All right folks, it is time to run another Short Story Competition. The first one was highly successful with 86 entries and voting rounds that went for almost 2 months. This time, however, instead of 500 words you will be able to use 1,000. The rest of the rules are the same as you can read below...

Some ?All? Words and Expressions

Posted on December 03, 2008
You’ll hear some of these in conversation and see them on blog sites, but when it comes to formal writing, beware of these “all” words and expressions. all of - I ate all of the cookies. The “of” is unnecessary. Better: I ate all the cookies...

50 Incorrect Pronunciations That Make You Look Dumb

Posted on December 02, 2008
Fred Astaire drew laughs back in the Thirties with his song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" in which the lovers can't agree on the pronunciation of words like either, neither, and tomato.

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Words for Subservient People and Actions

Posted on December 02, 2008
One of the most unforgettable characters in literature is Uriah Heep in the novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Heep works as clerk to Miss Trotwood’s lawyer, Mr. Wickfield. Because Wickfield is often incapacitated by alcoholism, Heep is able to cheat him out of his wealth...

Don?t Be Too Eager to Publish

Posted on December 01, 2008
My son gave me a mystery the other day. He'd encountered the author at Barnes and Nobles and, having chatted with the man, he felt bound to buy a copy of his book. We'll call the writer Author X.

The Changing Pronunciation of ?Leisure?

Posted on December 01, 2008
When I was about ten years old, my aunt gave me a subscription to a Disney comic. I remember one issue in which Donald Duck and his nephews had a treasure map. Overheard saying that he was “in search of buried treasure,” Donald tried to deceive the villain who’d heard him by claiming that [...

Word of the Day: Karma

Posted on November 29, 2008
Karma [k�r'm?], on the Buddhism, is the overall effect that the actions of a person will have on its own future existence. It can also be used generally to indicate one's destiny or fate.

Words to Describe Fearful Recoil

Posted on November 27, 2008
Writers are constantly reminded “Show, don’t tell!” One way to be more descriptive in our writing is to use verbs that convey movement. Here are some words that describe movement prompted by fear, cowardice, or pain. flinch [fl?nch] to draw away in anticipation of pain...

English Words Spelled with 3-letter /?/

Posted on November 26, 2008
Among several ways to spell the “long i” sound in English is the 3-letter combination -igh- as in sight [s?t]. The spelling reflects an earlier pronunciation in which the gh represented a sound made with the soft palate, rather like the ch heard in German ich...

We?re in the Pink

Posted on November 25, 2008
Look up the word pink in the Merriam-Webster Online Unabridged Dictionary, and you’ll find 13 entries for the single word, and 175 two-word entries in which one of the words is pink. An impressive legacy for a word that entered the language in 1573 as the name of a plant and not a color...

What is a Split Infinitive?

Posted on November 24, 2008
This is the passage that contains what may be the most famous split infinitive of all time: Space… the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before...

The Difference Between ?Un-? and ?Dis-?

Posted on November 23, 2008
A reader asks about differences between the prefixes un- and dis-. The question is not easy to address. The prefix un- has been in the language longer than dis-. The Old English prefix on- (now spelled un-) was added to verbs to indicated a reversal of the action: wind/unwind bind/unbind fold/unfold do/undo This prefix has remained alive, giving us such verb [...

Hermes, God of the Word

Posted on November 20, 2008
In Greek myth Hermes [h�r'm?z], son of Zeus [z?s] and Maia [m?'?, m?'?], was not just the patron god of thieves, merchants, and boundaries. He was also a god of science, art, speech, eloquence, and writing. Hermes…son of Zeus and Maia, which is, of mind and sense...

Numskulls, Noodles, and Nincompoops

Posted on November 19, 2008
When I began to research words meaning “stupid person,” I expected to find ten or so common ones and be done with it. Instead I’ve found dozens upon dozens of English words used to describe a person of perceived limited intelligence...

Word of the Day: Aura

Posted on November 19, 2008
Aura [�r'?] is a noun, and it refers to an invisible, subtle breath or emanation, like the aroma of the flowers. It can also be used to indicate the atmosphere or intangible quality surrounding a thing or person. The plural can be written as auras or aurae.

What is Dative Case?

Posted on November 18, 2008
A reader asks about the grammatical term “dative case.” English makes use of four “cases” - Nominative, Genitive, Accusative, and Dative. The term “case” applies to nouns and pronouns. The case of a noun or pronoun is determined by what the word does in the sentence...

To ?B? or Not to ?B?

Posted on November 17, 2008
English words ending in the spelling -mb occasionally give English learners difficulty. The error arises in trying to pronounce the final b. Some of these words derive from originals that included the b sound and spelling. Some, however, had the unnecessary, (sometimes called the “parasitic”), -b added after the words were in common use...

Should THAT Be Allowed to Stand In for WHO?

Posted on November 16, 2008
A reader writes to deplore the use of the relative pronoun that when the antecedent is person: English is my second language, and it hurts to see the rampant disrespect everywhere for a person who Here’s the offending sentence in a recent DWT post that prompted the objection: A fervent person is one that feels very intensely about [...

Be Your Own Ideal Reader

Posted on November 15, 2008
Our article Your Ideal Reader prompted a response from veteran writer Kilburn Hall, who wrote: There is no ?ideal? reader and if you start trying to write for one specific audience, you?re going to tune out others that might actually be interested in reading your book.

Words to Describe Degrees of Religiosity

Posted on November 13, 2008
With the topic of religion so much in the air, writers may have use for adjectives to describe various degrees of religious feeling and behavior. The following words have other meanings, but here the focus is on their use to describe people. religious - “dedicated to religious practice; observant practitioner of a particular religion...

Don?t Blame the Americans for this One!

Posted on November 12, 2008
Ever since the 17th century, our English cousins have been blaming Americans for distorting, weakening, or vulgarizing the English language. For many, the term “Americanism” next to a word in the dictionary is a warning to avoid using it...

Grammar Done Right - Interview With Karen Reddick

Posted on November 12, 2008
Karen Reddick runs the Red Pen Editor and is the author of Grammar Done Right. We asked her about her book and her views on writing and editing.

?A Historic? or ?An Historic? Event?

Posted on November 11, 2008
A Google search will show more uses of a historic than an historic, but in speech, “an historic event” is the more idiomatic. To repeat something I wrote in a comment, ?An historic? is idiomatic when the words are run together and the stress falls on the second syllable of historic...

Use Modal Verbs With Care

Posted on November 10, 2008
English, like other Germanic languages, makes use of a special class of verbs called modals: can, dare, may, must , need, ought, shall, will. Modals serve useful functions in expressing various tenses, moods, and conditions, but they can have an insidious effect on one’s writing...

Idiots, Imbeciles, and Morons

Posted on November 09, 2008
In a recent state election Arkansas voters were asked to alter the following constitutional phrasing: “No idiot or insane person shall be entitled to the privileges of an elector.” Legislators objected that the language was archaic and disrespectful...

Hurray for ?Slew!?

Posted on November 06, 2008
I saw a headline in my morning newspaper (Yes, I still read print!) that renewed my hope that one of my favorite irregular verb forms, slew, is going to survive after all. U.S. says raid slew leader of terror cell Ever since Buffy the Vampire Slayer ruled the television waves, the regularized form slayed has been gaining ground...

?Colloquial? Does Not Have to Equate with ?Ignorant?

Posted on November 05, 2008
I’ve written more than one post criticizing non-standard usage on television and will probably write more. A frequent opinion among the wonderful readers who take the time to comment is that I may have unreasonable expectations regarding the use of standard English on television...

Everybody is a Native Speaker, Nobody is a Native Writer

Posted on November 05, 2008
Does writing English cause you pain? Maybe that's because you're not a native writer of English. But then, none of us is a native writer of anything. We all learned to talk before we could write.

Is ?Religulous? A Word?

Posted on November 04, 2008
Since it’s the title of a movie, “religulous” must be said to be a word, but it’s not a very good one. I object to it as I do to any movie title that spreads and reinforces incorrect forms of English spelling or idiom. Critics to the contrary, English spelling has rules and the portmanteau [...

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