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August 05, 2009
Speaking and Writing Well: The Overstatement.
If you're wonderfully but spectacularly Irish, like WAC?, and you try cases, you should also take notes here. And then take a year off from work. Just to study your notes and practice your speaking and writing.
Well, maybe take off two or three years. Think of it as an extended rehab for those who chew more than they bite off.
See at The Trial Practice Tips Weblog "The Only Writing Tip That Really Matters", which quotes William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White's The Elements of Style:
When you overstate, readers will be instantly on guard, and everything that has preceded your overstatement as well as everything that follows it will be suspect in their minds because they have lost confidence in your judgment or your poise.
Blarney Castle, near Cork, Ireland, housing the Stone of Eloquence.
Posted by Rob Bodine at August 5, 2009 11:59 PM
Comments
Your advice is Overstatement, isn't it? Anyway, speak for yourself, big boy.
Posted by: Kathleen Casey at August 8, 2009 08:13 AM
Do some work. Read Rob's post again, Kathleen. The link, too. Maybe comment again. Don't let the world think that we Irish people really ARE thick, drunk and useless, after all. But thanks for giving your first and last name; the other commenters on this did not.
Posted by: Dan Hull at August 8, 2009 12:57 PM
Aw I was getting at the advice to take off one to three years from work to study and practice speaking and writing. That's the overstatement. Which is the point I see. Irony.
We are in a profession in which we do or should being doing those things daily, to be useful to others. Besides, if I were to take off the time I would become thick, drunk, and useless to others, and then die too young.
I read Strunk and White years ago and have reread it in recent months to assist in editing a work product of mine that is very important to my client, and to me. For accuracy, comprehensiveness, logic, persuasiveness, flow, and...tone. Our indignation, mine and his, peer out. And coiled fury. Glints of light on the shards.
I won't let myself go anon though I have wondered if I am the moron for it. As in gee there she goes again spouting off like an idiot. Anyway who cares?
Posted by: Kathleen Casey at August 9, 2009 10:10 AM
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