10.4 SUMMARY
To make your document reader-friendly and user-friendly, first be sure that you understand how the parts of your argument fit together. Then, make sure to show explicitly how the pieces fit together, and make it easy for all readers to find the various sections of your argument.
Use roadmaps, headings, topic sentences, and connection-conclusions to show hard-copy and digital readers and users both where each section of the argument is and how each section relates to the whole.
Chapter Ten Review
1. Install a template in your document, using topic sentences, headings, roadmaps, and connection-conclusions. 2. Include the relevant phrase-that-pays in each topic sentence whenever possible. 3. In topic sentences in rule explanation, use framing words to persuade. 4. Use the topic sentence formula for case description paragraphs:
Phrase-that-pays is established [or cannot be established] when category of facts or reasoning that reveals a new facet of the phrase-that-pays exists. [Citation to relevant authority.]
5. Make Kevin Bacon connections explicit so that the reader understands how the pieces of the document fit together. 6. Be mindful of how you use software, especially as it relates to bookmarking and hyperlinks.
1 Henry M. Hart, Jr., The Supreme Court, 1958 Term, Foreword: The Time Chart of the Justices, 73 Harv. L. Rev. 84, 94 (1959) (cited in James VanR. Springer, Symposium on Supreme Court Advocacy: Some Suggestions on Preparing Briefs on the Merits in the Supreme Court of the United States, 33 Cath. U. L. Rev. 593, 593-94 (1984)).
2 To play the game and learn more about it, visit “The Oracle of Bacon” Web site at http://oracleofbacon.org/ack.php (last accessed Mar. 9, 2018). Brett Tjaden founded the site in 1996; Patrick Reynolds has maintained it since 1999. When I submitted “Oprah Winfrey,” I learned that she has a Bacon number of two.
(Oprah Winfrey was in The Princess and the Frog (2009) with John Goodman; John Goodman was in Death Sentence (2007) with Kevin Bacon.) Because a Bacon number of four provides a better teaching tool, I have left my example as is. Kevin Bacon has created a charitable organization that links celebrities to worthy causes; if you wish to contribute or learn more about it, consult http://www.sixdegrees.org/ (last accessed Mar. 10, 2014).3 E.g., Rebekah George Benjamin, Reconstructing Readability: Recent Developments and Recommendations in the Analysis of Text Difficulty, 24 Educ. Psychol. Rev. 63, 70 (2012) (noting that where “there are few or no gaps in overlap across sentences, then a text is seamlessly moving from one point of information to another while giving the reader all the help he or she needs to build new knowledge”). See also Anne Enquist & Laurel Currie Oates, Just Writing 62 (4th ed., Aspen 2013) (recommending “substantive transitions” in which the writer echoes a word or a phrase from a previous sentence, noting that these transitions “[interlock] ideas by creating an overlap of language”).
4 See, e.g., Geoffrey B. Duggan & Stephen J. Payne, Skim Reading by Satisficing: Evidence from Eye Tracking, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 1141-50, 1147 (2011) (agreeing with a conclusion about eye-tracking studies showing that “skimmers begin every paragraph and continue reading until the rate of information gain drops below a threshold whereupon they skip to the beginning of the next paragraph”).
5 See generally Mary Beth Beazley, Hiding in Plain Sight: “Conspicuous Type” Standards in Mandated Communication Statutes 40 J. Legis. 1 (2014) (describing how various courts and legislatures have mandated all capital letters with the phrase “conspicuous type,” even though all capital letters make writing less legible).
6 E.g., Ralf Herrmann, How Do We Read Words and How Should We Set Them?, Wayfinding & Typography (June 14, 2011), available at http://opentype.info/blog/2011/06/14/how-do-we-read-words-and-how-should-we-set-them.
This essay explains that we can see clearly only a few letters at a time, and that we use our more blurry peripheral vision to pre-read and decipher upcoming letters. It also shows that all-caps letters are indistinguishable when blurry and that use of all-caps lettering therefore slows comprehension.7Linda Holdeman Edwards, Legal Writing: Process, Analysis, and Organization 69-74, 133-37, 160-61 (5th ed., Aspen 2010).
8 See Kenneth D. Chestek, The Plot Thickens: Appellate Brief as Story, 14 Legal Writ. 127, 155-56 (2008) (“The ‘road map’ paragraphs... describe where the legal issues will be encountered in the remainder of the brief. They serve both as ‘foreshadowing’ of the conflict to raise in the coming pages and as a neat transition to the ‘rising action’ portion of the plot.”).
9See Laurel Currie Oates & Anne M. Enquist, The Legal Writing Handbook § 21.2.1 (4th ed., Aspen 2006).
10 E.g., Anne Mangen, Bente R. Walgermo & Kolbjorn Bronnick, Reading Linear Texts on Paper versus Computer Screen: Effects on Reading Comprehension, 58 Int’l J. Educ. Research 61-68 (2013). “Subjects who read the texts on paper performed significantly better [on reading comprehension tests] than subjects who read the texts on the computer screen.” Id. at 65.
11 Furthermore, the package that gives us those accessible documents — whether it is a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, or an iPhone — also brings with it a host of distractions that can affect our ability to read and retain the information that we read.
12 See Mangen et al., supra note 10, at 65-66 (“Evidence suggests that readers often recall where in a text some particular piece of information appeared (e.g., toward the upper right corner or at the bottom of the page).... [T]he fixity of text printed on paper supports reader’s construction of the spatial representation of the text by providing unequivocal and fixed spatial cues for text memory and recall.”) (citations omitted).
13 See Mangen et al., supra note 10, at 65 (“Scrolling is known to hamper the process of reading, by imposing a spatial instability which may negatively affect the reader’s mental representation of the text and, by implication, comprehension.”) (citations omitted).
14 See, e.g., Robert Dubose, Writing Appellate Briefs for Tablet Readers, Appellate Issues (Spring 2012), available at http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/appellate_issues/2012sprng_ai.authcheckdam.pdf) (last accessed June 27, 2018).
15 Daniel Sockwell, Writing for the iPad Judge, Colum. Bus. L. Rev. Online (Jan. 14, 2014) (available at https://cblr.columbia.edu/writing-a-brief-for-the-ipad-judge/) (last accessed June 27, 2018). 16E.g., Duggan et al., supra note 4, at 1146, 1147 (agreeing with a conclusion about eye-tracking studies showing that “skimmers begin every paragraph and continue reading until the rate of information gain drops below a threshold whereupon they skip to the beginning of the next paragraph,” and explaining research results showing that “lines towards the top of the page were more likely to be fixated upon than lines towards the bottom of the page”). 17See, e.g., Dubose, supra note 14 (making recommendations about highlighting structure for digital readers).