Set in Style

I’m spending today editing a law firm’s practice area descriptions, and I’m finding the usual problems. One of them is a frequent change in point of view.

Recall the three points of view:

• first person — speaking about oneself; e.g., “I am short.”
  
• second person — speaking about the listener; e.g., “You are tall.”
  
• third person — speaking to someone about someone else: “She is skinny.”
  

When it comes to an exposition like the description of a practice group, point of view is best kept steady. Frequent changes to point of view yield an inconsistency that can burden readers, and that’s not a good thing to do.

Here’s my advice: pick a point of view, and stick with it. Don’t use third person to say one thing about your firm, and then shift to first person to say another thing, and then shift back to third person to say yet another thing. That’s not good style.

The pros don’t do it, so why should you?

Law firms are publishers. They publish briefs, brochures, newsletters, client alerts, practice area descriptions — they publish lots of stuff. But their publications say they’re not pros. Just look at how law firms set type, and you can see that many don’t know how.

While law firms are notorious for their lack of typesetting skills, professional publishers are not; they know how to set type.

The next time you’re in a book store, take a look at the new releases. In particular, look at casebound books published by established houses, like Viking, or Harper, or Random House, or Doubleday.

Grab a good book, and then look at its table of contents. Notice the heading. In a book published by a pro, “Table of Contents” is not the heading of the table of contents. That heading is used by amateurs, by young editors who haven’t had a good education, and by law firms — but not by professional publishers.

Turn to a page inside the book. Take a look at how the copy is set. Notice the uniformity of the spaces between the words and at the end of sentences. There is very little variation in size.

Now look at a legal brief, or a law review article, or a law firm’s practice area descriptions. Notice how the spacing between words varies from one line to the next. Notice how an extra space is added to the end of each sentence. Set a law review article and a magazine article side by side and compare the two. Notice the substantial difference in how the two are set. One is set by a pro; the other is not.

Does it matter? Yes, it certainly does.

And, if you care, stay tuned.

Compare a law review article to a magazine article. Go get one of each, set the two side by side, and examine the copy.

Among the differences between the two is this: the spaces between the words in the magazine article are much more uniform.

Does that matter?

Yes, it does.

One of the things we’ll be discussing (comments are welcome) in this blog is how to set copy in good style. If you’re an attorney and you care about style, you’ll be very interested in this discussion.

Is appearance important?

You bet it is.

Click this link to see a page from a famous book, a book set by a famous typesetter — Johannes Gutenberg.

Notice the uniformity of the spaces between the words in Gutenberg’s Bible. Unlike a modern law review article, the space at the end of a sentence is no greater than the space between two words.

The Gutenberg Bible is set in good style. The law review article is not.

Now . . . if you suppose the average attorney knows how to set type better than the most famous typesetter, find another blog. This one is going to be a waste of your time. But if want your copy to look sharp, stick around. We’re going to look at some ways to make that happen.