Legal Writing

Obama's Inauguration Speech Relies on the Rhetoric of Responsibility

Posted on January 21, 2009
I heard commentators on NPR argue that the inauguration rhetoric of President Barack Obama did not "soar." I agree with that criticism, which is why it is unlikely that a single phrase will be quoted by our grandchildren. But political rhetoric should be judged not just on its inspirational eloquence, but also on its ability to move an audience, not just to tears, but to action...

The Lure and Peril of 'Missing White Girl' Syndrome

Posted on November 18, 2008
As I write this, a news bulletin from CNN alerts me that there may be a break in the Caylee Anthony case. Divers in Orlando, announces the anchor, have found a plastic bag at the bottom of a river. The bag is said to be weighted down with bricks and to contain children's toys and possibly bones...

The Lure and Peril of 'Missing White Girl' Syndrome

Posted on November 18, 2008
As I write this, a news bulletin from CNN alerts me that there may be a break in the Caylee Anthony case. Divers in Orlando, announces the anchor, have found a plastic bag at the bottom of a river. The bag is said to be weighted down with bricks and to contain children's toys and possibly bones...

How Lines of Language Moved Lines of Voters

Posted on November 06, 2008
RELATED View slideshows of 11 national sites, 31 TV stations and 79 local papers, featuring coverage of Obama's victory. Submit a screengrab.More election-related resources:Interactive Forms Give Power to Election PerspectivesVideo Complements Election CoverageTop Priorities of an Obama AdministrationPage One Today / Obama's Historic VictoryHighlighting Diverse Angles in the ElectionsDon't Drop Religion Angle After Votes Are CountedVisualizing Data on Election DayFiveThirtyEight Combines Polls, Reporting, Baseball It was not the war, or the economy, or George Bush that got Barack Obama elected...

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How Lines of Language Moved Lines of Voters

Posted on November 06, 2008
RELATED View slideshows of 11 national sites, 31 TV stations and 79 local papers, featuring coverage of Obama's victory. Submit a screengrab.More election-related resources:Interactive Forms Give Power to Election PerspectivesVideo Complements Election CoverageTop Priorities of an Obama AdministrationPage One Today / Obama's Historic VictoryHighlighting Diverse Angles in the ElectionsDon't Drop Religion Angle After Votes Are CountedVisualizing Data on Election DayFiveThirtyEight Combines Polls, Reporting, Baseball It was not the war, or the economy, or George Bush that got Barack Obama elected...

Subjunctivitis: What Happens When your Verbs Get Blurry?

Posted on October 27, 2008
I begin this lesson on a difficult grammatical concept called the "subjunctive mood" with a memory of one of the first pornographic films I ever saw. It was called "The Secret Lives of Romeo and Juliet," and by contemporary standards would barely raise even a highbrow eyebrow...

From Pepys to Your Peeps, Finding Your Voice as a Blogger

Posted on October 20, 2008
What is a blog? Am I a blogger? Should a blog change the way I think and write?During the first week in December, I am leading a seminar at Poynter titled "From Report to Column to Blog." I'll have the help of such brainiacs as Matt Thompson, Jay Rosen and Josh Benton, along with a team of Poynterites...

Journalists Should Follow President Bush's Example

Posted on October 15, 2008
I listened carefully to a full nine-minute address to the nation by President George W. Bush on Oct. 10, and have now read and studied the complete text. In spite of the president's reputation as a clumsy speaker, I found the remarks a model of civic clarity...

Covering Economic Crisis: Wall Street vs. Main Street

Posted on October 13, 2008
There appears to be one thing that presidential candidates and journalists can agree upon: that "Main Street vs. Wall Street" is the political and cultural slogan of the day.Democrats and Republicans can use it for their own ideological purposes, Republicans to demonize liberal elitism and Democrats to inflame class prejudices...

The Well-Crafted Sentence

Posted on October 09, 2008
Letters represent sounds. Words are built from letters. A group of words makes a phrase. Add a subject and verb, and you have a clause. If that clause expresses a complete thought, we call it a sentence. But if that clause expresses an incomplete thought, it is called subordinate or dependent, and we have to attach it to a main clause, or it will not be considered Standard English...

About to Bail

Posted on October 01, 2008
I heard a member of Congress complain that headline writers were partly responsible for the failure of recent economic legislation by referring to it as a "bail out" plan. He argued that it should be called a "work out" plan. Another insisted on calling it a "rescue" plan...

America and Wall Street's Gambling Addiction

Posted on September 30, 2008
Gambling is seductive. I learned that lesson the first time my wife and I visited Foxwoods Resort Casino, one of the world's largest, in a cozy wooded town in southern Connecticut. We were playing the quarter slot machines, and Karen won about $25, which came pouring out in that delicious silver cascade of coins...

What Would David Foster Wallace Write About John McCain Now?

Posted on September 26, 2008
I'm not one of those writers who believe much in the "tortured artist" syndrome. My guess is that depression is as serious a problem for truck drivers as for authors. The culture would be more literate if we helped people escape the notion that good writing requires a dark night of the soul or some agony in the garden...

NOLA Story Demonstrates that Nothing is Ineluctable

Posted on September 23, 2008
The word "ineluctable," meaning "not to be avoided or escaped; inevitable," appears on page 896 of the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) along with 55 other words, most of them adjectives. The adjective, we should all have learned in grammar school, adds to the meaning of a noun, a job that could be fulfilled by each of these words:  ineffable, ineffectual, inefficient, inelastic, inelegant, ineligible, ineloquent, inert, inessential, inevitable, inexact, inexcusable, inexorable, inexpedient, inexpensive, inexpert, inexpressive, and my new all-time favorite: inexpugnable, meaning "impossible to overthrow by force...

When a Verb is a Noun

Posted on September 18, 2008
Good morning, students.Today's lesson is on the parts of speech. Can anyone name them? Wally? No, not the teeth, tongue and lips. They are body parts that help you speak, but they are not the parts of speech.Hermione? Very good, young lady...

How to Get Readers to "Go There"

Posted on September 15, 2008
I was born to write this lead: "My butt could save your life."That immortal phrase appeared at the top of my story in the St. Petersburg Times this week, a cautionary tale about my tail, so to speak, my colonoscopy, that is.I share this story for two reasons: to describe some important writing strategies; and, more crucial, to get you screened for colon and rectal cancer if you belong to one of the risk groups...

You Can Put Lipstick on a Bad Writer, but...

Posted on September 11, 2008
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. And you can put a tired catch phrase in the mouth of a great orator, and it's still a tired catch phrase.Next thing you know, Sen. Barack Obama will be trying to turn chicken spit into chicken salad or lemons into lemonade...

Seven Missteps on the Road to Ambiguity

Posted on September 08, 2008
Poet and scholar William Empson was only 24 years old in 1930 when he wrote the book "Seven Types of Ambiguity," which is why I hate him, not for the influence of his scholarship, but that so wise a study of literature should come from a so young a writer...

Great Presidents are Great Communicators

Posted on September 05, 2008
I have been thinking a lot in this election season of a remark I heard Norman Mailer make at the Nieman Narrative Conference in the months before his death. He said, in essence, that a leader, especially a president, should be judged by his use and abuse of language...

Here's Your Handy-Dandy Propaganda Detector

Posted on September 02, 2008
Journalists love slogans about journalism, and one of their favorites is Hemingway's insistence that writers need to "develop a built-in bullshit detector." The tools of skepticism are at the center of the reporter's craft. To be used in the public interest, these tools must be dusted off and sharpened, especially in this season of overheated political advertising, spectacle and oratory...

Political Rhetoric as Predictable as an Episode of 'Law & Order'

Posted on August 28, 2008
Political oratory in America has become as predictable as an episode of "Law & Order."If you are a fan of "Law & Order" - the original series - then you know there is a reliable and predictable structure to the narrative:*The story opens with two or three random characters whose only job is to find a dead body...

What Happens to a Verb Deferred?

Posted on August 25, 2008
Even more than pubs, old movie houses, and ancient ballparks, I love bookstores. For me, a bookstore is like sex or pizza: even when it's bad it's good. My kind of bookstore has book carts in front of the store, open to the elements, crammed with tattered and water-stained detritus, the ruined remains of remainders...

Pointing the Way

Posted on August 21, 2008
Sometimes when I read, the words will begin to glow on the page, like a scene from Harry Potter, always a signal to me that I should begin to read more carefully. This second, closer reading will often reveal some clever or useful effect, the result of the strategic application of a writing or language tool...

Branching Out Can Leave Verbs Out on a Limb

Posted on August 14, 2008
Over millennia of language use and study, one powerful message survives: The creation of meaning - expression of a complete thought -- requires a subject and a verb, the king and queen of comprehensibility. And the king and queen are most powerful when they sit on thrones beside each other rather than in separate castles far away...

Splice and Dice

Posted on August 12, 2008
You would think that one way to learn about the technical aspects of language is to read masterful writers, especially contemporary authors whose work is honored by critics and prize juries. So you should head for the archives of the Pulitzer Prizes or the National Book Awards, right? Not so fast...

Dialect Lessons from the Masters

Posted on August 06, 2008
RELATED The Problem of DialectEach of us speaks -- and sometimes writes -- in a dialect, which means to me, a non-standard form of English defined or influenced by national origin, region, ethnicity, or social class. Learn more about how to use dialects in your writing...

The Moral of the Story

Posted on August 06, 2008
RELATED   In an interview with Poynter, St. Pete Times reporter Lane DeGregory and photojournalist Melissa Lyttle describe their work on "The Girl in the Window." Here are the highlights:   Story Idea | Building Relationships | Collaboration | Photography | Reporting | Writing | Online Presentation | Structure | Print Presentation | Emotional Consequences | Accountability | Theme It took about 45 minutes last Sunday to read "The Girl in the Window" in Poynter's St...

Let the Games Begin Without Me

Posted on August 03, 2008
RELATED Olympics Past and Present   Beijing Olympics & Net Censorship: Who's Calling the Shots?   Olympic Protests Solidify Government Support in China   Death Threats Won't Stop USATer from Covering Olympics Olympic Warm-up: China's Net Filtering Gets More Subtle   Covering the Beijing Olympics Won't Be Easy   2006 OLYMPICS COVERAGE   Olympic Athletes: Handle With Care   Olympic Photos: Picks from the Photo Editors   Lessons from Olympic Imagery   2004 OLYMPICS COVERAGE   Gold Medal Coverage Seeing the Games in Greece Through a Local Lens   Howard Berkes on Covering the Olympics for NPR   The Olympics Online in Poland   A Sampling of Gold-Medal Olympic Online CoverageThe Olympian Task of Finding Olympic TV Schedules The Interactive Summer OlympicsI love sports and sports journalism, but that does not make me a fan of the Olympic Games, which begin on August 8, 2008; Make that 8/8/8...

The Problem of Dialect

Posted on July 31, 2008
One of the trickiest and most tempting acts of writing is to render a person's styles of speech. My wife, who grew up in Rhode Island, may have once said to me, "I am going to need a new pattern for a corduroy jumper," but it probably sounded more like, "I'm gawna need a new patten for a cawdurhroy jumpuh...

Death to Serial (Comma) Killers

Posted on July 28, 2008
FROM THE EDITOR The Poynter Institute follows Associated Press Style and excludes what is called the "serial comma" or "Oxford comma," that is, a final comma in a series before and. But given the rebellious opinions of our author, we have waived that standard exclusion, so expect to find in this essay more commas than usual...

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