Legal Term of Art Punctuation

Punctuation is perhaps one of the most abused elements of writing in general – from professional and academic writing to creative and legal writing. Diction, word placement and sentence structure seem to dominate the writing world, while the value of precise punctuation seems to fall through the cracks. 7. Use a comma after «said», «declared», «exclaimed» and similar terms when entering a quotation. In other cases, add the word «it» and don`t use a comma. It is sometimes difficult, as with the word «inmate» in the second example below, to determine whether it is acceptable to use an introductory term with a comma (such as «said») instead of an introductory term with the word «that» (such as «wrote that»). When in doubt, use the latter option (judged that, wrote that, found that, came to the conclusion that). This is the generally accepted option. However, in a legal document, everything must be in its place.

Here are five tips to keep in mind and follow to make sure you properly drill through your legal documents, memos, case files, letters, and other forms of paperwork. Punctuation is a component of writing that people rarely think about or notice, except when it`s wrong. At worst, misused punctuation marks — commas, semicolons, quotation marks, and the like — can confuse the meaning of your sentences and leave your reader confused and frustrated. Even less glaring mistakes, such as a missing or misplaced apostrophe, can make your written work look like carelessness and lack of attention. 3. Quote words that have a particular meaning or eloquence. From time to time, we come across a sentence or phrase that is so well written that it would be almost criminal to paraphrase it. Other sentences may have become part of the tradition of legal writing, and to the informed reader, a paraphrase would seem silly. These phrases are rare, but if you find them, feel free to quote them. They can be particularly effective in the context of a brief or brief being prepared for a court.

Sometimes we would lose the effectiveness of the quote if it did not remain autonomous. In this case, the general rule against freestanding quotes should be ignored. Here are a few examples. Perhaps one of the most common errors in punctuation is its relationship and placement in quotation marks. Many people seem to feel more comfortable putting their quotation marks before punctuation (for example, B.: Mr. Smith stated that «the driver appeared drunk at the scene»). 8. When incorporating quoted material into your own sentence, make sure the result is a grammatically correct sentence. If you add someone else`s words to your own to form a sentence, the combined product should be grammatically correct. To determine if the sentence is grammatically correct, briefly ignore the quotation marks and ask yourself if the sentence would be correct if all the words were yours.

Otherwise, you`ll either have to rewrite the part of the sentence you created, or delete the quoted material and use a paraphrase. Decimal placement can radically change the meaning of a sentence. The placement of commas determines the grammatical and therefore logical structure of the sentence. The rules for using other punctuation marks in quotation marks are quite simple. If you introduce a quote with a sentence like «He said,» «The record says,» or «As Justice Scalia wrote,» you`ll need to use a comma before the quotation marks: Purdue University`s online writing lab has an excellent section on punctuation of all kinds. It would be a good investment of time to refresh your memory with the explanations and exercises on this site. However, here are brief discussions on some of the most common punctuation errors. However, if you`re incorporating quoted material into your own sentence, you don`t need introductory punctuation: the typical comma seems to be either overused or underutilized in most documents – including various types of legal writing. Since you should focus on increasing the quality of your legal documents through the proper use of punctuation, it is imperative to learn the art of putting commas in your sentences. In most legal documents, the hyphens used in the text appear to be intentionally perceptible to most readers.