ing. And past participles are past tense words that often end in “d” or “ed.”11


Use


control-find to look for the forms of the verb “to be” in your draft. Once your com- puter stops on one, check the next word to see if it’s a past participle. If so, you’ve got the passive voice. Another trick that works frequently is to search for the word “by.” Take this example: The motion was filed by the defendant. Many times, when you have passive voice, you also use the word “by.” Control-find for “by,” and if you find it, check for the form of the verb “to be.” To cure your pas- sive problem, take whatever comes after the “by” and make it the subject. The defendant filed the motion.


4. Certain Punctuation and Important


Names Use “control-find” on quotation marks and parenthesis marks too to make sure that where there is an open quotation or parenthesis, there is a closed quotation or parenthesis. Do the same with apostro- phes to make sure your usage is correct. And last but not least, make sure you’ve spelled your client’s name and the judge’s name correctly.12


Add “Judge” or “Justice”


to your list of control-find words to make sure what comes after it is correct. If your client’s name is tricky, put in a few different permutations so you can check them all.


Computer Tip 2—Trim Your Word Flab with the “Writer’s Diet ™”


A second computer tip to use in your proofreading is The Writer’s DietTM


, a free


online tool created by Dr. Helen Sword.13 Dr. Sword devised a test for the liveliness of professional writing. She did so by choos- ing “examples of the liveliest and stodgi- est academic writing [she] could find and extrapolat[ing] the initial values” to create an algorithm that she then tweaked.14


The


test lets you assess the fitness of your writ- ing and helps you, in Dr. Sword’s words, “energize your writing and strip unneces- sary padding from your prose.”15


The first


step is to run a 100-1000 word sample in the test and receive your diagnosis from “Lean” to “Heart Attack” levels of flab in your writing. Take this example:


Manifestly, the failure of the respon- dent to timely reply to petitioner’s written demand for compliance with the terms of the aforesaid agreement requiring delivery of the Interface Pro- totype before August 1 was ample justification for the application of the doctrine of anticipatory breach which operated to free the petitioner to seek and obtain a source for substitute per- formance.


This passage is clumsy, hard to follow, www.vtbar.org


and frustrating for the reader; understand- ing it requires reading it a few times. Not surprisingly, this sample received a “Heart Attack” diagnosis. But consider this sam- ple from Chief Justice Roberts’ (regarded as one of the nation’s best legal writers16 opinion in the Affordable Health Care case:


)


Today we resolve constitutional chal- lenges to two provisions of the Pa- tient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010: the individual mandate, which


requires individuals to pur-


chase a health insurance policy provid- ing a minimum level of coverage; and the Medicaid expansion, which gives funds to the States on the condition that they provide specified health care to all citizens whose income falls below a certain threshold. We do not consid- er whether the Act embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the Nation’s elected leaders. We ask only whether Congress has the pow- er under the Constitution to enact the challenged provisions.


In our federal system, the National Government possesses only limited powers; the States and the people re- tain the remainder. Nearly two cen- turies ago, Chief Justice Marshall ob- served “the question respecting the extent of the powers actually grant- ed” to the Federal Government “is perpetually arising, and will probably continue to arise, as long as our sys- tem shall exist.” McCulloch v. Mary- land, 4 Wheat. 316, 405 (1819). In this case we must again determine wheth- er the Constitution grants Congress powers it now asserts, but which many States and individuals believe it does not possess. Resolving this controver- sy requires us to examine both the lim- its of the Government’s power, and our own limited role in policing those boundaries.17


This passage is easy to follow, and deserv- edly earned a “Lean” rating on the Writ- er’s Diet test. The Writer’s Diet also of- fers a “complete diagnosis” on your sam- ple, pointing out problems such as “waste words,” “prepositional podge,” and excess “noun density,” and offering specific ad- vice for improvement. This online diagnos- tic has its limitations, of course, but it can be a good way to test readability in your writing, so give it a try.


Hard Copy Tips and Tricks


Once you’ve done everything you can do on the computer, it’s time to print out the document. Working with a hard copy increases your chances of catching cer- tain mistakes and allows you to experience


THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • WINTER 2014


reading the document the way your read- er probably will. With a hard copy in hand, here are some things to check for:


• Check your paragraph length. Readers like to see white space on the page. Having paragraph breaks help; aim to keep your paragraphs about half a page or less.


• Highlight the first sentence of every paragraph and then read only those sentences. If you have written strong topic sentences for each paragraph, your document should make sense reading only the highlighted parts. If the document doesn’t make sense, go back and see if you can write a stron- ger topic sentence to help your reader follow your analysis.


• Read out loud. Reading a document out loud helps increase the chanc- es of catching typos and unclear sen- tences. Don’t forget to check the cov- er page. Many computers, including most Macs, have text-to-speech ca- pability built into the system.18


Take a


hard copy of your document and fol- low along while the computer reads your writing out loud to you.


• Shuffle up the pages of your docu- ment and read them out of order, or read every other paragraph (and then go back to read the ones you skipped).


• Do a ruler read by putting a ruler un- der each line as you read it, starting from the bottom.19


• Break your final review into several stages. Do one proofread only for or- ganization, one for typos, one for cita- tions, etc.


•


All of these hardcopy proofreading tips attempt to break the short term memory’s hold on your writing and to break up your reading rhythm to increase your chances of catching typographical and other errors. Experiment with these techniques to find the ones that work best for you.


Conclusion In short, proofreading errors can be di-


sastrous to you and your clients. As Judge Wald of the D.C. Circuit Court warned:


You cannot imagine how disquieting it is to find several spelling or grammati- cal errors in an otherwise competent brief. It makes the judge go back to square one in evaluating the counsel. It says—worst of all—the author nev- er bothered to read the whole thing through, but … expects us to.20


Judge Wald’s solution is simple: “proof- read with a passion.” I hope the tips in this article will help you do just that.


31


Quick Proofreading Tips for Busy Attorneys


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