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Writing reasonsThe State Coroners Office of Victoria
Is there a problem?
What is it?
“The fact is that legal writing, as it pours out of thousands of word processors, is overblown yet timid, homogeneous, and swaddled in obscurity. The legal academy is positively inimical to spare, decent writing.”
Lawrence M. Friedman, Why I Write
“... conduct an inquest with as little formality and technicality as the interests of justice permit.”
Coroners Act 2008
PlanningArchitecture
WordsSentences
Paragraphs
Application
Planning
Who is your audience?
Who are they and what do they need?
Your next-door neighbour.
Who is your audience?
Planning
The content and structure of the finding differs from the content and structure of the hearing.
Identify the issues first. (Remembering they may change.) Include both issues about the death and prevention issues.
Make notes during the inquest, or as you read the submissions, and cross-reference them with those issues.
Planning
Sketch your architecture, remembering to:
1.establish the story
2.isolate the questions you need to resolve
3.logically order the questions you need to resolve
4.decide what recommendations you need to give.
Relevance
What goes in; what comes out?
Architecture
“[The writer] should have in hand a provocative beginning and an ending that will feel inevitable. Instead, he may arrive at his ending nonplussed, the arc of his intended tale lying behind him in fragments. The threads have failed to knit. The leap of faith with which every narrative begins has landed him not on a far shore but in the middle of the drink.”
John Updike
Architecture
1.Facts and issues
2.Inductive pattern
3.Deductive pattern
4.Professor Jim Raymond’s shotgun house
5.Signposting and scannability
Shotgun house
1. A death.
2. Questions arising from that death.
3. Answers to those questions.
4. Ways to prevent similar deaths.
Basic inquest architecture
1. Introduction / background / circumstances
2. Issues for the inquest
3. Comments
4. Recommendations
Basic inquest architecture
Headings
1. Question headings
2. Statement headings
3. Topic headings
Architecturein the court
Rewrite
Words
Words
1. Write in English
“Broadly speaking, short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.”
Winston Churchill
Testament: late ME, from the Old French tesmoignal, from the late Latin testimonials.
Will: from the OE willian, from the old High German willon, from the Germanic base will.
Will and testament
“The King has ordained… that all pleas which shall be pleaded in any court whatsoever… shall be pleaded, shown, defended, answered, argued, debated and judged in the English tongue, and that they shall be entered and enrolled in Latin.”
Translated from the French
The Statute of Pleadings, 1363
“... may be worthily compared to some old ruines of some faire building, where so many brambles and thorns are grown, that scarecely it appeareth that ever there had bin any house."
A French diplomat, during the reign of Elizabeth I, on the similarity between Law French and actual French.
Law French...
Law French...
... sounds like “the taunting Frenchman from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
David Franklin, “Pardon My Law French”, Greenbag, Summer 1999
“Richardson, C. J. de C. B. at Assizes at Salisbury in Summer 1631, fuit assault per Prisoner là condemné pur Felony; que puis son condemnation ject un Brickbat a le dit Justice, que narrowly mist. Et pur ceo immediately fuit Indictment drawn pur Noy envers le Prisoner, et son dexter manus amputée et fixée al Gibbet, sur que lui-même immédiatement hangé in presence de Court.”
Law French
“Richardson, C.J. of C.B. (Chief Justice of Common Bench) At Assizes at Salisbury in Summer 1631, there was an assault by a prisoner there condemned for felony; who, following his condemnation, threw a brickbat at the said Justice, which narrowly missed. And for this, an indictment for injury was immediately drawn against the prisoner, and his right hand was cut off and fastened to the gibbet, on which he himself was immediately hanged in the presence of the Court.”
additionally ➝ and
approximately ➝ roughly / about
at this point in time ➝ now
commencement ➝ start
considerable amount of ➝ a lot of / many / much
for the purpose of ➝ to / for
forthwith ➝ immediately
prior to ➝ before
proceeded to walk / drive ➝ walked / drove
substantial amount of ➝ a lot of / much / many
with reference to / with regard to / with respect to ➝ about
I can confirm that X ➝ X
“Use ordinary English in an ordinary way.”
Jim Raymond
“Never use a long word when a short word will do.”
George Orwell
“Contrary to prevailing wisdom, increasing the complexity of a text does not cause [the] author to seem more intelligent. In fact, the opposite appears to be true.”
Daniel Oppenheimer
“Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.”
Richard Dawkins
Words
1. Write in English.
2. Prefer concrete nouns to abstract nouns.
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
Winston Churchill
Abstract vs concrete
“What we would also need to have some guarantees about is the probity of the police force undertaking these tests themselves to make sure that they are free from corruption or any other maleficence.”
Kevin Rudd
Abstract vs concrete
“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”
Aristotle
Sentences
1.Keep sentences short.
Rules in sentencing
1.Keep sentences shortish.
2.Vary sentence length.
3.Omit needless words.
Rules in sentencing
Omit needless words
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
The Leda Suite, number 2
Sidney Nolan
Leda and the Swan
Peter Paul Rubens
Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating stillAbove the staggering girl, her thighs caressedBy the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.How can those terrified vague fingers pushThe feathered glory from her loosening thighs?And how can body, laid in that white rush,But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?A shudder in the loins engenders thereThe broken wall, the burning roof and towerAnd Agamemnon dead.Being so caught up,So mastered by the brute blood of the air,Did she put on his knowledge with his powerBefore the indifferent beak could let her drop?
William Butler Yeats
“If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”
George Orwell
1.Keep sentences shortish.
2.Vary sentence length.
3.Omit needless words.
4.Use the active voice.
Rules in sentencing
The passive voice
Police found no drugs or alcohol.
I do not believe the blow contributed to her death.
The man was killed by a blow to the head.
The passive voice
Ask: Who or what did what to whom or what?
Ask: Who or what did what to whom or what?
The passive voice
subject
verb
object
The passive voice
Police found no drugs or alcohol.
objectsubject verb
The passive voice
Police found no drugs or alcohol.
I do not believe the blow contributed to her death.
The man was killed by a blow to the head.
Active voice = subject + verb + object
Passive voice = object + verb + optional subject
The passive voice
Look for:
1. the verb “to be”: am, is, was, are, were, be, being, been
2. a verb in the past participle: which usually has an “-ed” ending.
The passive voice
Mistakes were made
“Mistakes were made” is an expression that is commonly used as a rhetorical device, whereby a speaker acknowledges that a situation was handled poorly or inappropriately but seeks to evade any direct admission or accusation of responsibility by using the passive voice. The acknowledgement of “mistakes” is framed in an abstract sense, with no direct reference to who made the mistakes. An active voice construction might be along the lines of “I made mistakes” or “John Doe made mistakes”. The speaker neither accepts personal responsibility nor accuses anyone else. The word “mistakes” also does not imply intent.
Mistakes were made
The New York Times has called the phrase a “classic Washington linguistic construct.” Political consultant William Schneider suggested that this usage be referred to as the “past exonerative” tense, and commentator William Safire has defined the phrase as “[a] passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it.” While perhaps most famous in politics, the phrase has also been used in business, sports, and entertainment.
From Wikipedia
“Mistakes have been made, as all can see...”
Ulysses S. Grant, during the final year of a presidency marred by political corruption
“I would apologize to the Post, and I would apologize to Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein. We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments.”
White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, during Watergate.
“And certainly it was not wrong to try to secure freedom for our citizens held in barbaric captivity. But we did not achieve what we wished, and serious mistakes were made in trying to do so.”
Ronald Reagan, on the arms-for-hostages scandal during the Iran-Contra affair.
“In the night in the fog of war, mistakes were made.”
General David Richards,on a 2006 air strike that killed 70 Afghan civilians.
1.Keep sentences shortish.
2.Vary sentence length.
3.Omit needless words.
4.Use the active voice.
5.Break some rules.
Rules in sentencing
1.Construct some long, complex sentences.
2.Write a paragraph of regular, staccato sentences.
3.Add some colourful but inessential detail.
4.Use the passive voice.
5.Break even more rules.
Break some rules
End sentences with prepositions
Good grammar is where it’s at!
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”
Begin with conjunctions
Split your infinitives
To boldly go where no judge has gone before.
Paragraphs
Paragraphs
1. Ensure structural consistency.
2. Keep the focus tight.
3. Don’t rabbit on.
4. Establish connections.
Writing recommendations
Rewrite
Application
Writing and editing
“Editing is the same as quarrelling with writers — same thing exactly.”
Harold Ross, founder of the New Yorker
How to speed it up
1.Plan your finding promptly.
2.Separate writing and editing.
3.Proof your work. Better yet, ask someone else to.
4.Manage your time.
“It means a bit of extra work, but one has one’s code.”
P.G. Wodehouse, on placing the right words in the right place.
