need more writing advice

[Bob]

this one's another technical question, it's about quotes. let's say i want to use a quote in my paper, and my quote is going to start in the middle of a sentence. however, the quote is actually the beginning of a sentence, so it begins with a capital letter. do i just leave the capital letter there, or do i have to lowercase it? and if i do have to make it lowercase, how do i do that? here, i'll illustrate my problem. let's say that this is a quote from a case.

The rights of property owners are not absolute.

and i want to say "In bob v. alice, the supreme court held that "The rights of property owners are not absolute.""

now i'm almost positive that that capital T in "The" isn't supposed to be there because it's in the middle of a sentence. can i just change it to "...held that 'the rights of...'", or do i have to do something weird like "...held that '[t]he rights of...'"? or do i just leave it capitalized?

i'd google it but my brain hurts too much to think of how to phrase the question, so i'm just assuming someone on here knows

[Planetary]

i think starts of quotes have capitals, yeah. im not 100% though.

[jackrock]

"In bob v. alice, the supreme court held that 'The rights of property owners are not absolute.'"


and i think it would be capital.

[Bitchamachacha]

Bob walked into his room and said, "Pie. Mmm pie. Try pie, try," then pulled out his penis and offered the pie to his friend.

Yes. Capitalize!! You are quoting a sentence, and you start a sentence with a capital letter.

[Bob]

hmm, ok, i guess that makes sense

i don't know why i was so sure you had to uncapitalize it. maybe i was thinking of the other way around. like if you start a sentence with a quote, and the part you're quoting is the middle of another sentence, you have to capitalize the letter? yeah, that was probably it.

it's a moot point anyways, i actually got rid of the quote, it didn't fit, but this is all good stuff to know anyways. thanks!

[zippo]

ofcourse bob! always capitalize the first letter of a quote, and never forget to include a comma before the quote like bitcha did if its not in the beggining of a sentence

i thought the comma before her closing quote was wrong in english as it is in spanish, but i googled and saw you guys do that...differences of the language eh

[zippo]

wait, this webpage is saying something different!

http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/QPA_quoting.html#punctuate

dont know what kind of souce that is, maybe you guys will


... if youre quoting a whole sentence, then capitalize, if youre quoting a part of one then dont capitalize

[befsquire]

you actually need to lowercase it, but put it in brackets to show that it's a change from the original.

In Bob v. Alice, the Supreme Court held "[t]he rights of property owners are not absolute."

[zippo]

are you sure? unless youre referring to some sort of legal writing procedure you guys use, i think the correct way would be:

In Bob v. Alice, the Supreme Court held, "The rights of property owners are not absolute."

[Bob]

arg

i am so sick of this memo right now. a problem with my first draft was that i didn't discuss the facts of the cases that i cited, so now in my final draft, i have to go back and do that, but it feels so forced. i can't figure out how to do it without making it sound like a book report, it just doesn't fit naturally into the flow of the paper. also, it's making the memo too damned long. stupid facts. i'm like stephen colbert right now, i'm not a fan of facts

[zippo]

oh youre not writing poetry, just show the dude you understood
i dont know, i usually never put my all into school work if i understood and learned what ive been taught, i save it for the real world, ive always had that sort of stubborn way of looking at school work

[befsquire]

are you sure?
yes, i'm sure. you wouldn't just all of a sudden capitalize the word "the" in the middle of a sentence, so you don't do it when it's part of a quote.


bob, you have to remember that you're not writing something to be creative. you're writing to persuade the court to rule in your favor. that requires dry facts that you have to equate to your specific facts.

example, from a motion to suppress:

Deputy Dantes also conducted a traffic stop because one of the Defendant’s taillamps “was not fully illuminated.” Deputy Dantes did not allege that the taillamp was not visible from 1,000 feet to the rear of the vehicle, and thus, Defendant was not in violation of any traffic law and should not have been stopped. Florida Statute §316.221(1) requires “[e]very motor vehicle … shall be equipped with at least two taillamps mounted on the rear, which, when lighted as required in s. 316.217, shall emit a red light plainly visible from a distance of 1,000 feet to the rear….” Fla. Stat. §316.221(1) (2000). While Florida Statute §316.610 allows an officer to stop a vehicle he believes is unsafe or where he believes the vehicle is not in proper repair, this statute must be read in conjunction with Fla. Stat. §316.221(1), which specifically details taillamp requirements. Doctor v. State, 596 So.2d 442, 446 (Fla. 1992).

boring, but i won. lucky for my client, since he scored 2.5 years DOC and therefore any plea or sentence would require that he be sentenced to at least that amount of time (assuming the prosecutor would not do a downward departure).

[Bob]

well no, it's not that i'm worried about making the paper interesting, i'm just having a real ass of a time making it concise. i had to sort of overhaul my first draft because i failed to discuss the relevant facts of the cases that i cited, i just told what the rule was. but in addition to telling what the rule of the case is, i have to go over the facts of the case that lead to the holding that relate to the rule, then compare the facts of my case to that case and discuss how the rule applies, based on that. and i've done that, and i think it looks pretty nice, but it's too long. she was very clear, it needs to be under 6 pages. i'm at 6 and a half, i'm not done yet, and i can't figure out what to cut out.

i'm also having a hard time making it not sound like a book report. it's like, we have to synthesize 3 cases to determine the rule of law, which i can do, but where i'm getting caught up is this fact discussion part. if i'm citing 3 cases to determine a rule of law, i need to discuss the facts of 3 cases, and i don't know how to do that without making it a book report. you know, without having paragraphs that go "in state v. shack, two members of a nonprofit group wanted to access a farmer's property etc etc" and then another paragraph that goes "in baer v. sorbello a union rep and a state assemblyman" yadda yadda. i can synthesize the rule well enough, but this fact discussion hoopla is throwing me for a loop

i've decided i can't stand to look at this memo for one second longer. i'm going to get drunk and finish watching the paper chase and then i'm going to see if i can't look at it in a different light tomorrow.

6 pages, geez. i'd be fine if it were 7.

[Documad]

What Beth said is right. Your sentence has to read correctly and if you have to change the case of a letter to do it, you change it by using brackets. You wouldn't put a capital letter in the middle of a sentence. Similarly, if you were quoting from something that used to be in the middle of a sentence but not it's starting your sentence, you take the lower case and capitalize and use brackets to change it.

Legal writing is a formula. You will get more creative with it over time, but for now it's all IRAC and just follow the formula.

Do whatever your teacher says for now. In real life, I tend to only discuss the facts of important cases and if three of them are all the same, I pick the one most like mine and discuss it in detail and then I throw a sentence in there somewhere saying that other cases in the jurisdiction follow the same rule and I do a string cite with parantheticals.

[Bob]

What Beth said is right. Your sentence has to read correctly and if you have to change the case of a letter to do it, you change it by using brackets. You wouldn't put a capital letter in the middle of a sentence. Similarly, if you were quoting from something that used to be in the middle of a sentence but not it's starting your sentence, you take the lower case and capitalize and use brackets to change it.

Legal writing is a formula. You will get more creative with it over time, but for now it's all IRAC and just follow the formula.

Do whatever your teacher says for now. In real life, I tend to only discuss the facts of important cases and if three of them are all the same, I pick the one most like mine and discuss it in detail and then I throw a sentence in there somewhere saying that other cases in the jurisdiction follow the same rule and I do a string cite with parantheticals.

IRAC, right. what the prof gave us is RAPACC, apparently this is the new shit in legal writing

Rule
Analysis of Precident
Application of law to facts of case
Counter-argument and Rebuttal
Conclusion

So i split up my issues according to that formula (at least for the final draft, for the first draft, i paid no attention to it, i treated it as a guideline and she said "hmm, no, use RAPACC")

but it just feels so forced! the whole point of RAPACC and IRAC etc etc is to give a logical flow to your discussion section. but i mean, as i write, i don't feel like i'm organizing it so that it has a logical flow, i feel like i'm organizing it so that it conforms to RAPACC. kind of ironic, really.

i guess where i'm really having trouble is, is this. i have to synthesize a rule of law based on multiple cases. three of them, actually. and every case i cite, i have to discuss the facts of that case as they relate to the rule of law. if i cite a case, i have to discuss the facts, end of story. i'm just REALLLLY having a rough time integrating that factual discussion into the logical flow of my memo. much less making it under 6 pages. hopefully tomorrow insight will strike me, but seriously, i'm tearing my brains out here. the fact that the max length requirement exist meanst that obviously my memo's not concise enough but i'm having a hell of a time figuring out what to snip

[Bob]

i sound really drunk in that post. most drunk posts don't revolve around memorandi

well, now you have one

[befsquire]

bob, i feel you. i do. but you're used to writing a different way, and so your teacher is trying to untrain you. it really doesn't matter that you start the beginnings of your paragraphs similarly. this is not an english class, and you aren't being graded on a stylistic type system. you're being graded on being concise and getting the point across. so, it's going to be dry, and it's going to be similar. there's only so many ways to start a paragraph when case law is involved; "the court held," "in blank v. blank," "the 5th DCA in blank v. blank"...

you gotta get past that.

it's not supposed to be fun to read, it's supposed to be informative.

if you're writing a memorandum of law, you have to tell what the case law is and why the rulings are more like your client's case and therefore the court should rule in favor of your client.

to make it concise, look over your sentences and make sure they're active and not passive. also, a lot of words are not necessary, like "that" and "the."

[Documad]

Everyone is different, but I always write as much as I need to and then set it aside for a bit and pick it up and edit it. You can find a lot of extra words when you do that.

The rule about having to discuss the facts of every case you cite seems silly, but do what you're told.

Yes, it's a formula. We all know that. Your audience is used to the formula. I've mentored a lot of people and edited a lot of legal briefs and when you fuck with the formula, unless you're brilliant, you're going to confuse your audience.

I assume that you were a liberal arts major. Liberal arts majors have the hardest time (in my experience) in adapting to legal writing. They think they're clever and they were good at what they did in college and they run into a big wall first year by trying to be too creative. I was lucky that I had a BS degree and my writing experience was mostly faux executive summaries for business reports. It's closer to the legal writing formula. Sorry Bob, you just have to suck it up for now, but I PROMISE that eventually it will come naturally to you.

[befsquire]

I assume that you were a liberal arts major. Liberal arts majors have the hardest time (in my experience) in adapting to legal writing. They think they're clever and they were good at what they did in college and they run into a big wall first year by trying to be too creative. I was lucky that I had a BS degree and my writing experience was mostly faux executive summaries for business reports. It's closer to the legal writing formula. Sorry Bob, you just have to suck it up for now, but I PROMISE that eventually it will come naturally to you.
yup.

being creative will kill you, bob.

[Documad]

PS -- you don't need to explain all of the facts -- just enough so it's clear why the case is like your case or why the final appellate court reached the conclusion it reached.


i'm so happy that Beth and I always agree.

[befsquire]

it's cause we're awesome, doc.

[Documad]

it's cause we're awesome, doc.
how true

[Documad]

If it helps you understand, it's actually good that it's boring and repetive. If you're writing a brief to a judge, you want the judge to think that it's the easiest, simplest, most boring case on earth. Every other court has dealt with similar facts and there are consistent results and so there's only one way the judge can decide your case.

You're saying that in case A, something similar to your case happened and the highest appellate court established a standard. In case B, something similar happened and the appellate court followed the same standard or slightly tweaked it. In case C, the appellate court followed the same standard. So in your case, which is like A, B, and/or C, it is quite obvious that your court should follow the same standard and following that standard means that your client wins. If it's more interesting than that, the court deciding your case can't be sure that you should win -- maybe your opponent should win.

[Bob]

i keep ALMOST posting this, but

would either of you be willing to read my memo and tell me where i can make it more concise? i realize you don't have my factual situation, but as i understand it, if my memo's tight enough, you shouldn't need it. i think my statement of facts, questions presented and conclusion are pretty good, but my discussion section's too verbose.

don't feel obliged to say yes, in fact, say nothing if the answer's no. it's my homework, after all, i'm sure i'll figure it out (i have to, what better motivation exists?)

i'm fairly positive that i'm talking too much about the facts of the cases, but, for the one case (state v. shack) i did briefly discuss the facts for, the prof's note was "flesh this discussion out more"

so basically, i need to flesh the memo out more, and make it more concise, oh well, grand

[befsquire]

totally unrelated, but not worthy of a new thread: my work is sending me to advanced defender college. it's for people who've been attorneys for 3-5 years and have been in felony for over one year. i have been in felony less than one year (and am now in their felony b division, just being bumped up from c) and have been an attorney for a little over a year and a half. still have no bar complaints (all of my friends have had at least one). also, i have a new nickname at the jail -- snowbunny. because i'm white like snow and cute as a bunny.

sheesh.

[befsquire]

i'll read it. you just have to promise not to hate me or take it personally.

[Bob]

i'll read it. you just have to promise not to hate me or take it personally.

apparently the majority of the kids in my research and writing class (the class that this assignment is for) felt like crying after their individual conferences with the professor (she's not actually a professor, she's a "lawyering adjunct", whatever that means, but she will be heretofore referred to as a professor). my conference wasn't so bad, she said my large scale organization was quite nice, but my small scale organization needed a lot of work, because i didn't adhere to the formula. so basically i had to overhaul the discussion section completely so that it adhered to the formula, so, substantively, it's pretty much a new memo, only i won't get any feedback on it before i hand in the final draft.

so really, go nuts, i won't get offended. it's my first memo, i'm supposed to fuck up, i think. if you DO need the text of my factual situation, tell me, i'll get it for you, but i think my statement of facts sums it up pretty well.

it's a closed memo, which means that we were given the three cases necessary to synthesize the rule of law, we didn't have to do any research.

so yeah, be brutal, i'll PM you the memo shortly

[Documad]

Ah bless you Beth. I would have been willing to read the discussion re one case as a sample but I don't have time for the whole thing. And without a fax machine I have no way how I'd show my comments/edits.


Bob, the most difficult people I've worked with are the ones who can't do the large scale outline, so it sounds like you're ahead of the curve.

[yeahwho]

also, i have a new nickname at the jail -- snowbunny. because i'm white like snow and cute as a bunny.

sheesh.

As opposed to what they call me when I visit my dear old Mom in jail, "Fresh Meat"

[befsquire]

you suck, yeawho -- i've been searching for a week for the perfect sajak avatar and here you are with your fucking wheel of fortune one with not just pat, but vanna too.

fuck you hard.