Category Archives: legal assistant

Replay Thursday

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Thursday ReplayIt’s time for a review of recent blog posts just in case you’ve missed them. We call this Replay Thursday. Here are posts from Proof That proofreading blog and 60 Is The New 60 blog during the past week.

Grammar Giggle – What Year Is It?

Grammar Giggle – Commuting

Confusing Words Of The Week

Grammar Giggle – State of Uniom

Busy Is As Busy Does . . . Or Not?

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Grammar Giggle – State of Uniom

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While everyone has probably seen this one already, my son sent this to me and I thought it was interesting. Not only is “Union” spelled wrong, requiring them to reprint all of the invitations to the State of the Union Address, but I think that the Gallery is set up for more than one Visitor, so it should be the Visitors’ Gallery. I checked the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center website to try to figure out what they call it, and I find reference to “the Visitor Galleries,” which would be correct as it is a name for that area of the Capitol, and “the House and Senate Galleries,” but I find no reference to the “Visitor’s Gallery.” I’m thinking they didn’t fix that error when they reprinted the invitations because it isn’t an obvious error–to most people.

State of the Uniom

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Confusing Words Of The Week

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Words of the WeekIt’s time for “Confusing Words of the Week” where I take a set of two or three words that get confused and give you definitions and try to give you a memory trick to help you remember when to use which word. If you have words that confuse you, use the Ask PTB tab on the website or send an email to proofthatblog@gmail.com and they may appear here soon!

This week’s words are:

discreet – prudent

She was discreet about the secret her friend shared with her.

discrete – distinct; separate

The book had a discrete section on citations.

Memory tips:

discreet – think of the ee as eyes seeing something that shouldn’t be posted on the internet or something that you have to be discreet about.

discrete is separate – both end in te

 

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Grammar Giggle – What Year Is It?

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A friend received this email from a company she deals with after she called them about an issue. I understand the attempt at improving customer service, but everything is dated two years in the future! Unless those ladies in the DriveTime commercial have figured out a way to go two years into the future instead of only two minutes, there isn’t any excuse for this.

2020

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Replay Thursday

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Thursday ReplayIt’s time for a review of recent blog posts just in case you’ve missed them. We call this Replay Thursday. Here are posts from Proof That proofreading blog and 60 Is The New 60 blog during the past week.

Grammar Giggle – Brining Animals

Confusing Words of the Week

Legal Grammar In The News

Bitchy McGrumperson Is Not Welcome Here

 

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Legal Grammar In The News

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In The NewsI saw an interesting article recently that I thought I would share with you. It is an Above the Law article entitled “Lawyer’s Pleadings Are So Bad that Judge Orders Future Filings Must Be Reviewed By English Teacher.” (https://abovethelaw.com/2018/01/lawyers-pleadings-are-so-bad-that-judge-orders-future-filings-must-be-reviewed-by-english-teacher/) Here are the lessons I took from this article:

  • Judges DO care about proper grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and that the document makes sense.
  • Headings matter. If the heading has nothing to do with the following paragraph(s), it is of no use to anyone and shouldn’t be there. Headings are helpful to direct the reader to the areas of the document that you want them to find easily.
  • Formatting makes a difference. To have a judge call your document an “eyesore” is not good.
  • Getting an order requiring you to have an English teacher certify that the pleading was reviewed and approved and that the certification is included in the filing is embarrassing–and probably career-changing, particularly when the suit was dismissed and I assume his malpractice insurer has been alerted.
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Confusing Words of the Week

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Words of the WeekIt’s time for “Confusing Words of the Week” where I take a set of two or three words that get confused and give you definitions and try to give you a memory trick to help you remember when to use which word. If you have words that confuse you, use the Ask PTB tab on the website or send an email to proofthatblog@gmail.com and they may appear here soon!

This week’s words are:

Shown – displayed; revealed; past participle of show

The results had shown that their efforts were successful.

Shone – gave off light; did shine

The light shone directly in her eyes.

So what memory trick can we use to help remember these?

Shown is showing off something that you own.

Shone means did shine so it’s a change of one letter.

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