Improving sentence structure empowers your writing and your arguments.
Lawyers tend to be passionate about their work product. Words tumble out of our minds onto the keyboard and screen. Perhaps just perusing your opponent’s latest motion raised your blood pressure, and now you’re really letting them have it in your response.
It’s fine to follow your impulses as you figure out what you are going to say in your first draft. But once that’s out of your system, it’s time to revise. A basic way to empower your writing is to improve the sentence structure.
Who or What Did This? Choosing Active or Passive Voice
The simplest sentence structure is subject-verb-direct object. Who or what is doing the task described in the sentence? “The guard did not secure the gate” gets your point across more efficiently than “The gate was unsecured.” The first sentence is in active voice; the second is in passive.
When you need to name the entity that performed the action, always choose active voice. Omitting identification of the actor in a sentence leaves room for confusion as to who or what actually performed the act. When you are trying to show fault, you are missing the best way to drive home your point.
Are there ever times to anonymize your sentence? Sure. That’s the classic “Mistakes were made.” When you want to avoid pointing the finger, passive voice will do it.
Some people confuse passive voice with the past tense.
The most common way in English to show something happened in the past is to add -ed to the verb. That doesn’t change the sentence into passive voice. A sentence in passive voice reverses the actor — here, the guard — with the thing being acted upon.
What Did They Do? Choosing Verbs
Rather than construct a long, convoluted sentence, choose a verb that defines what happens. The attorney didn’t conduct a deposition of the witness; she deposed the witness. The attorney didn’t prepare a draft of the agreement; he drafted the agreement. Too many times, attorneys choose the wordiest way to construct a sentence. This dilutes the power of the argument. It also wastes your word limit.
What Was Acted Upon?
Verbs come in two flavors: transitive and intransitive. A transitive verb needs a direct object to complete the thought. “The guard did close” would leave a listener shaking their head. “The guard closed the gate,” or even “the guard closed it,” finishes the thought.
Like the lonely cheese in the farmer’s dell, an intransitive verb stands alone. “He snored” is a complete sentence. The verb “snored” is not acting upon anything.
Who/What Got That Direct Object?
“The witness told police the story.” Indirect objects appear between verbs and the direct object. Indirect objects are the recipients of the direct object. Another way to make the point is to use a prepositional phrase: “The witness told the story to the police.“
Is That All There Is?
Of course, that’s not all there is. Get to The Point has counseled against overusing adjectives and adverbs many times, which is not to say there is no place for powerful, properly placed modifiers.
While subject-verb-direct object is the foundation of simple sentences, your complex prose is likely to use phrases and clauses for each of those categories. Native speakers don’t think twice about creating word clumps that function as nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs.
Clauses are phrases that have a subject and a verb in them. Clauses can be subjects or objects:
The lawyer who gave the opening statement did not sway the jury.
The jury admired the lawyer who gave the opening statement.
Sometimes a subject or direct object looks like a verb.
In “Herman loved walking to the courthouse,” “walking” is a special kind of verbal known as a gerund.
Another type of verbal is the infinitive, as in “Herman loved to walk to the courthouse.”
A third type of verbal is the participle, which turns a verb into an adjective: Like a walking robot, Herman ambled toward the courthouse.
And then there are conjunctions.
We’re Not Writing ‘Dick-and-Jane’ Stuff Here
We could go on, but won’t.
The point is that there are many complex ways lawyers string together words to create sentences, paragraphs and pages. The starting and ending point of the sentences should be the simplest sentence structure that does the job.
Get to the Point!
More Writing Tips
Find more good ideas for improving your legal writing and communications skills in “Get to the Point” by Teddy Snyder.
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