Lawyers encounter hypothetical scenarios and conditional situations daily, so they must consider what might happen or what could have happened. Two powerful tools help lawyers write about hypotheticals with precision and clarity: the subjunctive mood and conditional phrasing.

Choosing the right pronoun to use when writing is harder than you might expect. Some pronouns serve several functions; some pronouns don’t change to show number or gender, and others seem redundant. There’s also social pressure to sound “sophisticated.” It’s no wonder writers are confused! Let's explore the proper usage of reflexive pronouns and first-person pronouns.

Language and Status: An Introduction to Two Schools of Thought

Language and status are closely intertwined. The language choices you make reveal information about your identity, background, and the formality of the situation. Two schools of thought influence our decisions on whether language use is “correct” or “incorrect:” prescriptivism and descriptivism.

Prepositions can add valuable detail and complexity to sentences, but they also invite nominalizations, passive constructions, and bloat. When these single-word connectors pile up in writing, you can kill the flow of your sentence and confuse your reader. What could make this worse? Multi-word prepositions.

Have you ever been told not to modify certain adjectives? This advice stems from a concept known as absolute adjectives. Grammarians believe modifying these adjectives is illogical and improper because, in their view, these adjectives cannot be reduced, enlarged, modified, or compared—they’re absolute. But many of these untouchable adjectives are often modified in daily usage. And that’s okay.

Be verbs have earned a bad reputation for creating boring writing—but they’re not alone. Copula verbs (also known as linking verbs), which include be, seem, feel, become, and remain, also create bland sentences. Though these verbs can be useful, more often they’re just feeble verbs that attract wan adjectives and slow your sentences.

Everyone remembers their high school English teachers admonishing them against using the dreaded passive voice. According to composition class lore, using passive voice was the chief writing sin—and avoiding it was the key to strengthening writing. If true, then two questions remain:

1. What is passive voice, anyway? (Don’t worry: Even the most pedantic folks can get it wrong!)
2. How do we re-write sentences to avoid passive voice? (What good is pointing out a writing ill without offering a writing cure?)

In this blog post, we’ll give you a refresher on passive voice, show you how to fix it, and explain the four times when passive voice is acceptable in your writing.

Maybe you’ve heard folks complaining about how young people tend to verb their nouns—adulting comes to mind. These new word constructions come from the need to make a static thing dynamic. In the case of adulting, the fact of living an adult life isn’t just a state of being, but takes constant and active maintenance. Verbing your nouns shows this constant state of motion.

Nominalizations—verbs or adjectives that have been converted into nouns—are common sources of obscurity, wordiness, and needless complexity in professional writing. While nominalizations may seem more formal when they appear in phrases like “reach a decision” or “make an assumption,” that requires equating formality with stodginess.

Small changes make a big difference in your writing’s clarity and brevity. One of the best professional writing tips is to simplify. Simpler is better for sentence structure, word choice, and document length.

Pronouns help writers shorten their sentences and vary their word choices so writing doesn’t seem repetitive. A pronoun is a short, generic word that replaces a noun. It can have one of three jobs:

What difference can three or four letters make? When they form pronouns, these short words can have a big impact. Pronouns are words used in place of other nouns. They reduce repetition, which improves the clarity, pace, and flow of a sentence or paragraph. Without pronouns, sentences would be longer and messier and communication would become more difficult. In a world without pronouns, reading and speaking would be painfully boring. To see the difference pronouns can make, consider these two sentences.

If you confuse the words affect and effect, you’re not alone. These two words are some of the most commonly confused words in the English language! Because they sound alike, it can be even harder to keep them straight.

Though we may be hired to interpret and apply the law, our clients rely on our writing skills to accurately capture their intent. It’s irresponsible to discount punctuation rules as pedantic and useless. Lawyers must get three comma rules right:

In this legal writing edition of infographics, we’re offering tips that Judges Know. With years of education and professional experience, judges are a wealth of knowledge on legal writing. Follow along as we offer examples that Judges Know that you can apply to your own writing today.

In this 3-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 3 Secrets to Writing Bright & Lively Sentences. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

In this 3-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 3 Secrets to Writing Bright & Lively Sentences. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

In this 3-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 3 Secrets to Writing Bright & Lively Sentences. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

I love editing. I used to edit instructors on an education website. I spent years proofreading and revising my peers’ work for student publications. In college, I volunteered to edit friends’ papers, resumes, and graduate school applications. Over the years, I noticed that many friends made the same punctuation mistakes. Microsoft’s recently released list of the errors people make most frequently while writing in Word includes several of the same errors. Here are three you can avoid.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.

In this 8-part series of infographics, we’re breaking down each of the 8 Secrets to Writing Clearly & Concisely. Follow along as we offer quick tips and examples that you easily can apply to your own writing today.