Legal Writing

Defending the single-sentence question presented

By Wayne Schiess

I teach my students to use multiple sentences and construct the question as a type of syllogism, and I've been doing it for 10 years.

If you teach or use the single-sentence question presented, what are its strengths? Let me cut off two before you reply.

1. Brevity
Some say the multiple-sentence question is too long and single-sentence question is shorter. Not in my view. I limit my multiple-sentence questions to 75 or 80 words, and I routinely see single-sentence questions of 80, 90, or 100 words. In a single sentence.

2. Tradition
I don't think writing a question in a single sentence is worth doing if the only reason is that it's a tradition. There better be other reasons. Good ones.

So . . . ?

Full post as published by Legalwriting.net on March 20, 2008 (boomark / email).