Get to the Point

Incorrect pronunciation can signal there’s something not quite right about the speaker. The speaker means to sound impressive, but incorrect pronunciation is a sure way to undercut a message. Generally, only your mother will correct you, so you ...

Cat got your tongue? Our special two-week holiday series, “Connect the Dots: A Lawyer’s Guide to Networking,” continues today with good tips on starting and sustaining conversations. You’ve heard about the elevator speech, the 30-second ...

You don’t have to be afraid of ghosts this Halloween. In fact, you might consider these five thoughts about working with one. 1. Why would I want to work with a ghostwriter? Most lawyers tend to write, well, like lawyers. A ...

“Your Honor, this is a motion to vacate the most recent order and request for rehearing. Unfortunately, our failure to appear was caused by a calendaring error in our office.” How embarrassing. Yet, “calendaring” or “docketing” (depending on ...

"One of the only": the ambiguous phrase that keeps popping up. I don't know what this means — and neither do your readers. A recent newspaper story about Martha Stewart’s sale of her brand quoted a branding maven: “When [Stewart] started, she ...

Even the best writer can sometimes confuse words that sound almost the same — call them sound-alikes. A prior post reviewed many of the ...

Maybe you’ve read the stories about the candidate who wasn’t hired because of spelling errors in the resumé. Or the firm that lost the bid in response to a request for proposal because of grammatical errors on its website. It’s not just lawyers ...

A Roman walks into a bar and tells the bartender, “I’d like a martinus.” The bartender says, “You mean a martini.” “No,” says the Roman, “I only want one.” English is a funny language — in both senses of the word. English incorporates words from ...

A basic rule of good writing is to make every word count. “There is,” “there are” and “it is” are the weakest ways to start a sentence. Used this way, “there” and “it” are placeholders for the real subject of the sentence. They are particularly ...

Similar-sounding words can have very different meanings. Sound-alike words have tripped up many a scribe. Because you may be spelling the word correctly but misusing it for the context, spell-check is of no help. Watch out! Incorrect usage will ...