Your Written Work: Capturing the Judge’s Attention—Part II

Whenever you can shorten a sentence, do. And one always can. The best sentence? The shortest. —Gustave Flaubert

My last column covered structural aids such as summaries, headings, and chronologies to capture the judge’s attention and highlight your most important points. I promised to put some meat on those bones with this column. Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto proposed that 20 percent of the effort produces 80 percent of the results. So I am only going to cover two points: voice and word choice.