Monday, May 07, 2007

Issue statements: single sentence?

A commenter writes--
[W]hen I was in law school (admittedly a long time ago), I learned that "questions presented" MUST be summed up in a single sentence each.
Yes, and that is still the technique most legal-writing teachers teach. But since 1997 I have been teaching a multiple sentence-issue statement, which I learned here:

Bryan A. Garner, The Deep Issue: A New Approach to Framing Legal Questions, 5 Scribes J. Leg. Writing 1 (1994-1995).

I do not insist that all issue statements be multiple sentences, but I certainly don't think the single-sentence approach is ideal.

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