TIP 1 Write short sentences.
Good writers control the length of their sentences. It would be silly, of course, to decree that all good writing averages X words per sentence; too many successful writers disregard this limit to defend a strict word count.
But concise legal writing is rarely bad legal writing because brevity reduces the risk that your writing will irk or confuse readers. And judges report that they prefer documents that contain short sentences.5 So give judges what they want.Why is brevity so valuable? As the brilliant Karl Llewellyn explained (as shown in Appendix A), “[t]he Simple appeals, it is easy to follow, it persuades.” By contrast, empirical studies show that writing verbosely makes writers sound dumber, not smarter.6 The simple act of shortening sentences hones your prose, clarifies your points, keeps readers interested, and makes it easier for you to spot problems in your legal analysis. So, in general, keep sentences short. To minimize the risk of confusing readers (and to maximize the likelihood of pleasing them), average seventeen to twenty words per sentence.7
To reach my recommended words-per-sentence average, you can and should write some miniscule sentences. Others, of course, can be much longer. As we saw earlier in the book, you may want some sentences to be lengthy (to hide bad facts, to vary your prose, or to overwhelm readers deliberately with a long list of information).8 More generally, however, avoid long sentences. You may sometimes catch yourself thinking, “this idea is complicated, so I need to use a long sentence.” Wrong. You need to shorten that sentence precisely because it’s complicated. If it’s hard for you to write your idea in a digestible way, then readers will almost certainly struggle to grasp your point. Also, buff longer sentences until you’re sure that readers will comprehend them.
For some lawyers, I’ll go even further: if your boss doesn’t like your writing, restrict every sentence to twenty-five or fewer words.
That’s right. Every sentence. That tip represents your best chance to quickly improve your boss’s impression of your writing.This twenty-five-word-limit — which will sound radical to some readers — produces remarkable results for struggling writers. Simply by keeping sentences under twenty-five words, writers ensure that they comply with many of the principles of good style. They hack wordy phrases, cut passive verbs, and limit the number of ideas in any single sentence, among other salutary changes. The results tend to thrill clients and supervisors, both because complying with the twenty-five-word-limit causes writing to sparkle and because short sentences are vastly easier for them to edit.
A friend who teaches undergraduates complained to me that her students’ written work was incomprehensible. I suggested my rule to her, and she imposed it on her class. When she next saw me, she was beaming, and she explained that the trick had rendered a miracle, “especially for weaker students, the ones who don’t have a built-in sense for what a good sentence looks like.” I asked her to describe the improvements in her students’ work. She explained that her undergraduates — like young lawyers — “stuff in thousands of dependent clauses and meaningless qualifiers in the mistaken hope that this will make us admire their prose.” The twenty-five-word rule, she explained, “shows them that what they want to write is actually what I want.”
Try it. You might like it. Your boss almost certainly will. (And yes, colons and semicolons reset the twenty-five-word limit.)