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Typography For Lawyers (2010)

by Matthew Butterick(Favorite Author)

4.45 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1598390775 (ISBN13: 9781598390773)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Jones McClure

review 1: Matthew Butterick gave a talk at the Write the Docs conference I attended in Portland earlier this year. At the conference he gave out copies of this book, but I didn't get one because I was sitting up in the balcony. I collared the author and he offered to send me a copy, and it arrived a week ago.I've read quite a bit about typography, and I've done a lot of typography, so a lot of this book covered things I already know. Which can be quite satisfying. The book is full of clever tips and useful resources, like the fact that the ideal line length is between two and three alphabets; if you want to make sure your lines aren't too long, write out the alphabet (no spaces) and make sure it wraps between the second and the third. There's a great list fonts organized in "if you ... morelike this font, you'll love these fonts!" form, presented as an antidote for evil system fonts.The book is written for lawyers, and so presents some information specific to the field, like how to format a caption page. Do you know what a caption page is? I didn't, but they're a pain to format and people like to make them really ugly. Butterick explains how you can make your documents beautiful while still adhering to court rules about format.Even though I'm not a lawyer, this book has enough good advice, well-presented, to earn a place on my reference shelf.
review 2: This book is a fantastic resource. The book was shared with me by one of my colleagues and I liked it so much that I bought my own copy to keep on my shelf at work to consult regularly. He has convinced me to break the long-standing habit of putting two spaces after periods and colons; he has convinced me to revisit the layout of documents filed in my cases. I agree with the person who wrote the forward that Butterick is wrong to suggest that brief headings should be numbered 1.1.1 instead of I.A.1., but I'll forgive him that small error. Though some reviewers suggest that this book isn't just for lawyers, I'll say that I think it wouldn't have much relevance to anyone who doesn't do a fair number of court filings or similarly regimented "publications." less

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