Academic Legal Writing - Eugene Volokh [67]
The Roman poet Horace spoke of “the will of custom, in whose power is the decision and right and standard of language.” If you depart from customary usage, you risk alienating readers. At the very least you are likely to distract them. Stick with common idiom, and you can get readers to focus on your ideas and not be distracted by your words.
L. Failing to Listen to Your Doubts
Sometimes, as you're writing or editing, you realize that something might not be quite right. Don't ignore that reaction. Instead:
1. Take a moment to look up the word in the dictionary. Checking a dictionary is easier than ever before; just go to dictionary.com, or to Black's Law Dictionary on Westlaw. If you learn that you have been misunderstanding the word, you will avoid embarrassment, not just this once but also many times in the future.
2. Look up the word in a usage dictionary. If you can, buy a usage dictionary and keep it by your desk—Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, and Bryan Garner's A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage are all good. These will tell you what controversies there are about particular words, and will help you avoid irritating readers who are prejudiced (whether reasonably or unreasonably) against particular usages.
If you don't own one of these dictionaries, you can search through Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage on Google Books.
3. Search online to see which of several alternatives is more commonly used. If you're not sure which word or phrase to use—“esthetic” or “aesthetic,” “premier lawyer in the country” or “premiere lawyer in the country,” “forbidden from carrying” or “forbidden to carry,” “al-Qaeda” or “al-Qaida”—see how others are using it. Search through Westlaw's cases or journals database, or through prominent news sources on Lexis (such as the Major Papers database, NEWS;MAJPAP), or even Google, and see which gets more hits.
If one term gets many more hits than the other, use the more popular one. If both get roughly the same number of hits, that means both are standard (though you might still check a usage dictionary, in case one alternative is for some reason disliked by self-described purists).
4. Ask a friend. If you're still not sure whether something sounds wrong or unidiomatic, or which phrase sounds better, ask someone.
5. If you don't want to be distracted from the flow of your writing or editing, no need to look up the word or phrase right away; just mark the possible error so you can check it later.
M. Using Needlessly Fancy Words
There are two problems with using needlessly fancy words.
1. Simple words will rarely steer you wrong: You know what they mean, and you generally use them only because you think they're the right tools for the job. Fancy words are often less familiar, and people sometimes use those words precisely because they are fancy. This increases the risk of writer error.
Thus, for instance, I sometimes hear people say “fulsome” to mean “full” or “thorough,” for instance in the phrase “a fulsome analysis.” But as it happens, one common meaning of “fulsome” is “offensive to good taste, especially as being excessive” or “excessively or insincerely lavish.”
Some people even claim that this pejorative meaning is the only correct definition, and “fulsome” in the sense of “thorough” is wrong. I think they themselves are wrong on that: Both definitions of “fulsome” are common in educated writing, and both are listed in dictionaries. But it's still unwise to use “fulsome” for “thorough”—it annoys some people, and distracts others. Why use in a positive sense a word that has a negative connotation to many readers?
Likewise, I sometimes hear people use “nonplussed” to mean “unfazed” or “unperturbed.” But the dictionary definition is “utterly perplexed.” Many people will assume this is what you mean, even if the “unfazed” meaning becomes common