For nearly a year, several of the Law School’s legal writing professors have been offering legal writing advice in a semi-regular column in the Wisconsin Lawyer magazine. The latest such contribution is Lisa Mazzie’s “Be Wise: Revise,” which provides “guidelines for creating effective style through revising – guidelines on when to revise, how to revise, and when to quit.” Her helpful advice highlights the importance of an objective attitude and critical eye during revision of one’s own work.
Professor Mazzie contributed another column, in June of this year, entitled, “Conciseness in Legal Writing.” Past legal writing columns from Marquette’s legal writing faculty also included Jill Koch Hayford’s November 2008 piece, “Style Books, Websites, and Podcasts: A Lawyer’s Guide to the Guides,” as well her March 2009 advice, “Update Contract Language to Meet 21st Century Readers.” A column about split infinitives, “Dispelling Grammar Myths: ‘To Split’ or ‘Not to Split’ the Infinitive,” by Rebecca K. Blemberg, appeared in the December 2008 issue.
The legal writing faculty will continue to write about legal writing for Wisconsin Lawyer magazine during the coming year.
This is good advice.
Personally, I mark passages for revision by changing the color of the text. It’s always easy to spot the red text while scrolling the page. And if I print on a black and white printer, the text will appear normal. There is no chance I will accidentally leave in some brackets.
I revised this comment once. How many revisions do most commenters make before posting?
Lisa, your advice in this column is extremely helpful. I especially like your suggestion to save multiple versions of a draft in different documents.