Legal Writing

Speaker Joe Griffith tells a story of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover:

A young FBI man was put in charge of the FBI's supply department. In an effort to cut cost, he reduced the size of memo paper.

One of the new memo sheets ended up on J. Edgar Hoover's desk. He disliked it immediately and wrote on the narrow margin, "Watch the borders."

His message was misinterpreted. For the next six weeks, it was extremely difficult to enter the United States by road from either Mexico or Canada.

This, week watch your borders--not the physical margins of your printed documents, but the much more important and elusive borders between your reader's understanding and misunderstanding. As you revise your messages, ask yourself whether there's any way they can be misunderstood. If so, move the message  across the border into comprehension.