Title your favourite guide. What’s your favourite line from that guide? Do you’ve gotten one? Are you able to even bear in mind one line, one quote from the guide? Now, title your favourite film. What’s your favourite line from that film? Are you able to choose only one, or are there too many to select from?
For those who’re like me, you’ve gotten a favourite guide, one you’re keen on above all others, one that you simply inform folks is a “must-read.” But as a lot as you’re keen on that guide, you can’t recite one line from the guide. You nearly can. You may visualize the setting and the primary characters in your thoughts. You may think about how they sound and their attitudes. However attempt as you would possibly, you can’t bear in mind one line of dialogue from the guide.
Then again, reciting your favourite line out of your favourite film isn’t any drawback. The truth is, chances are you’ll trot that line out with pals, household or co-workers. Certainly, chances are you’ll repeat it so typically that your co-workers, pals and households are fed up with it and with you. There’s simply so many instances folks can hear you say: “Depart the gun. Take the cannoli,” earlier than they need to deal with you to the identical finish that awaited Paulie in The Godfather.
Why is that this? Why do quotes from films implant themselves so clearly in our brains whereas the written phrase doesn’t? Is it that films are higher than books?
Historical past and expertise inform us that’s not so. Certainly, uncommon is the case during which a guide is tailored right into a film and the film model is a greater story. Does it occur? Sure. However that’s the exception not the rule. So why can we bear in mind quotes from films way more simply than quotes in books?
One rationalization could also be supplied by media richness theory, which was developed within the Eighties. Face-to-face communications or communication through video mixed with audio are richer types of media than the written phrase in that they’re able to talk complicated concepts extra rapidly and extra successfully in a shorter time period.
Why is that? There are a selection of causes, however chief amongst them is that the spoken phrase, due to nonverbal cues, in addition to tone and pitch of voice, faucets into emotion way more successfully than phrases on a web page. Thus, whereas human habits is driven both by logic or reason on the one hand and emotion on the other, there was suggestion that up to 90% to 95% of decision-making is pushed by emotion. And the spoken phrase is simpler at tapping into emotion than the written phrase.
However whether or not habits is pushed primarily by emotion or whether or not it’s pushed in equal measures by emotion and logic, it’s clear that emotion performs an integral half in our decision-making and habits. Accordingly, communication meant to foster a choice (e.g., authorized briefs) that may faucet into each logic and emotion is presumably a superior type of communication than that which appeals to only logic.
For those who don’t imagine this, simply attempt it for your self. Learn the French nationwide anthem, La Marseillaise. Then take heed to it being sung by Victor Laszlo and varied expats in Casablanca. That may clear up any doubts.
That’s all effectively and good, however how does this relate in any respect to authorized writing? In spite of everything, authorized writing is simply that—writing. It’s simply phrases on a web page, typically full of impassive jargon and quotation. What good does it do to know that the spoken phrase is simpler than the written phrase in speaking if you happen to’re required to current your concepts and arguments through a written doc?
Effectively, it means which you could take a look at your written materials by studying it aloud. Doing this can reveal whether or not your writing is obvious and whether or not it flows naturally—like spoken language—or whether or not it’s stilted, complicated and overly structured, full of dependent clauses, as authorized writings (and, certainly, this sentence) all too typically are.
Trace: If studying your work out loud leaves you breathless or you end up tiring of your personal voice, that’s an indication that it is best to trim your work all the way down to measurement.
Studying your work aloud can even allow you to establish typographical, grammatical and syntactical errors. Certainly, anybody who has been practising regulation for a while is aware of the sinking feeling of submitting a quick or sending an e mail solely to later discover a typo within the doc regardless of having proofread that doc a number of instances. Studying the written work aloud, nevertheless, is a superb double-check that may help in recognizing typos and different grammatical errors.
Maybe most significantly, studying your work aloud will allow you to find out whether or not your work has any emotional influence. If it sounds such as you’re studying a grocery listing, there’s guess it’ll learn simply as bloodlessly to a decide.
Is studying your work out loud a cure-all for issues in your writing? Definitely not. However it positively will assist. As Yul Brynner stated in The Ten Commandments: “So let or not it’s written. So let or not it’s finished.”
Alex Barnett is a companion at DiCello Levitt, the place he focuses on complicated, class motion litigation and representing these injured by antitrust violations.
ABAJournal.com is accepting queries for authentic, considerate, nonpromotional articles and commentary by unpaid contributors to run within the Your Voice part. Particulars and submission tips are posted at “Your Submissions, Your Voice.”
This column displays the opinions of the creator and never essentially the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Affiliation.
