Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Douglas E. Abrams
Published in the Fall 2010 issue of Precedent, the quarterly magazine of the
Missouri Bar:
http://members.mobar.org/pdfs/precedent/nov10/abrams.pdf
U.S. Senator, Massachusetts Governor, extends to choice of individual words. ed., 1994); Mark My Words: Mark Twain on
Writing xii (Mark Dawidziak ed. 1996).
Minister to Great Britain, Secretary of “The most valuable of all talents is that 8 George D. Gopen, Writing From a Legal
State, and Harvard University professor of never using two words when one Perspective 1 (1981).
and president. After Everett held the po- will do,” said lawyer Thomas Jefferson, 9 Jay Wishingrad & Douglas E. Abrams,
dium for more than two hours, Lincoln who found “[n]o stile of writing . . . so Book Review, 1981 Duke L.J. 1061,1063
rose with a masterpiece that took less delightful as that which is all pith, which (reviewing George D. Gopen, Writing From a
Legal Perspective (1981)).
than two minutes. never omits a necessary word, nor uses 10 Walter Allen, Writers on Writing 93
Mindful that the nation’s newspaper an unnecessary one.”56 (2007) (quoting Coleridge).
and magazine readers needed a concise, British writer H.G. Wells concisely 11 Guy de Maupassant, Selected Short
stirring and readily embraceable ratio- stated the case for conciseness: “I write Stories 10-11 (Roger Colet ed., 1971)
(Maupassant quoting French writer Gustave
nale for wartime perseverance, Lincoln as straight as I can, just as I walk as Flaubert).
knew that his audience extended beyond straight as I can, because that is the best 12 Felix Frankfurter, Some Reflections On