University of Michigan Law School University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository
Articles Faculty Scholarship
2019
Good Sentences
Patrick Barry University of Michigan Law School, [email protected]
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/2205
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Part of the Legal Writing and Research Commons
Recommended Citation Barry, Patrick. "Good Sentences." Mich. B. J. 98, no. 2 (2019): 40-1.
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Michigan Bar Journal February 2019 40 Plain Language
Good Sentences
By Patrick Barry
He is careful what he reads, for that is what In this way, skilled writers and editors chanic might learn about an engine by tak- he will write. combine two pieces of advice: one from ing it apart.”6 — Annie Dillard, Judge Frank Easterbrook, who is among the Embrace this craftlike approach to read- The Writing Life (1989)1 best judicial writers around; and one from ing. Pay attention not just to a passage’s con- Francine Prose, who is among the best lit- tent but also to its composition, to how it I’ve always said the only way to be a good erary writers around. was put together word by word, sentence by writer is to be a good reader. You can’t do The advice from Judge Easterbrook comes sentence. Study how paragraphs are con- it consciously. You can’t say, “This is how from an interview in 2014. “Spend more time structed, how their various parts work to- you need to structure a sentence.” But your reading,” Easterbrook said when asked what gether to communicate information clearly, mind structures the words and it sees them, young lawyers could do to improve their effectively, and sometimes beautifully. Your and when you try to write them again, they writing skills.3 He specifically recommended writing will improve. Your rhythm will im- tend to come out better because your mind the novels of Ernest Hemingway, William prove. Your readers will be grateful. is thinking of what was a pleasing sentence Faulkner, and Saul Bellow, though he also to read and remembers that when you try said that much can be learned from regu- Ted Williams, Jimi Hendrix, to write. larly reading well-edited magazines like The and Edouard Manet — Chief Justice John Roberts 2 Atlantic and Commentary. “The best way to When baseball great Ted Williams joined become a good legal writer,” he insisted, “is the Boston Red Sox as a 21-year-old rookie o write good sentences, you to spend more time reading good prose.”4 in 1939, the best hitter on the team was a need to read good sentences. The advice from Francine Prose comes slugger named Jimmie Foxx. Williams idol- Skilled writers and editors T early in her 2006 book Reading Like a Writer. ized Foxx, who was so strong and im- know this, so they seek out “Too often, students are being taught to posing that Lefty Gomez, a star pitcher good sentences wherever they can find read as if literature were some kind of eth- for the New York Yankees, once remarked them—the short stories of Alice Munro, the ics class or civics class—or worse, some that even Foxx’s hair had muscles.7 Because political essays of William F. Buckley, even kind of self-help manual. In fact, the im- Foxx drank buttermilk, Williams drank but- well-crafted cartoons, speeches, and adver- portant thing is the way the writer uses the termilk—despite not liking the stuff at all.8 tisements. They read not just with voracity language.”5 She later notes that “[e]very so And because watching Foxx take batting but also with an eye toward larceny, always often I’ll hear writers say that there are other practice before games gave Williams a on the lookout for moves that they can learn writers they would read if for no other rea- chance to study the mechanics of a future and repurpose. son than to marvel at the skill with which Hall of Famer, Williams consistently carved they can put together the sort of sentences out time to do so.9 “To play good baseball,” that move us to read closely, to disassemble Williams seemed to believe, “you need to 35th and reassemble them, much the way a me- watch good baseball.”
“Plain Language,” edited by Joseph Kimble, has been a regular feature of the Michigan Embrace this craftlike approach to reading. Bar Journal for 35 years. To contribute an article, contact Prof. Kimble at WMU–Cooley Pay attention not just to a passage’s content Law School, 300 S. Capitol Ave., Lansing, MI 48933, or at [email protected]. For an in- but also to its composition, to how it was put dex of past columns, Google “Plain Language column index.” together word by word, sentence by sentence. February 2019 Michigan Bar Journal Plain Language 41
Jimi Hendrix did something similar when from convoluted statutes and clunkily com- ENDNOTES he started becoming serious about the gui- posed judicial opinions, it has created a digi- 1. Dillard, The Writing Life (New York: HarperCollins tar. In the early 1960s, well before he would tal library designed to expose them to the Publishers, 2013), p 68. redefine what it meant to play the “Star- patterns and techniques of passages that 2. Interview with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Spangled Banner” and eventually become are much more elegant and engaging. The 13 Scribes J Leg Writing 39–40 (2010). what the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame describes resource is called, straightforwardly enough, 3. Garner, Garner on Language and Writing (Chicago: as “the most gifted instrumentalist of all “Good Sentences,” and is available at http:// American Bar Assoc, 2009), p 16. time,”10 Hendrix went on the Chitlin Circuit, libguides.law.umich.edu/goodsentences. 4. Id. a collection of venues throughout the south- The Good Sentences library at Michigan 5. Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Cure for People Who Love Books and Those Who Want to Write Them ern, eastern, and upper midwestern states is devoted to writing related to law in gen- (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), p 9. that welcomed black performers during a eral. But you can imagine a Good Sentences 6. Id. at 36. period of intense segregation. Still only a library devoted to writing related to more 7. James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball backup musician, Hendrix used the time to specific topics: contracts, torts, immigration, Abstract (New York: Free Press, 2003), p 891. learn as much as he could from legends like family law—anything, really. You can imag- 8. Bradlee Jr., The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Little Richard, ine one set up for prosecutors, another for (Columbus: Little, Brown & Company, 2013), p 118. Solomon Burke, and the Isley Brothers.11 defense counsel, still another for each va- 9. Burns, Baseball: Inning 6—The National Pastime Similar patterns of intense, imitative im- riety of transactional attorney. “Every dis- (1940–1950) (PBS television broadcast September mersion in the work of others can be found cipline has a literature,” William Zinsser 25, 1994). in the career trajectories of musicians as explains in Writing to Learn, “a body of 10. Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, The Jimi Hendrix Experience