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The Infinite Power Of Grammar, Patrick Barry

Articles

Good lawyers know that effective advocacy requires more than just choosing the right words; it also requires choosing the right word order. The formal term for this choice is “syntax.” But perhaps a better description comes from a 1976 essay by Joan Didion called “Why I Write.”

In it, Didion draws a helpful parallel between the arrangement of a photograph and the arrangement of a sentence. “To shift the structure of a sentence,” she notes, “alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of the camera alters the meaning of the object photographed.” Didion refers …