The Burgeoning Young Attorney

Typography Tips for Lawyers

Posted on October 28, 2015

I recently came across this article and thought it was an excellent overview of typography tips for young attorneys. Quite often, we are consumed with the substance of our writings and, while important, the presentation can be equally as essential. The excerpt below is from 10 Takeaways from Typography for Lawyers written by Matthew Salzwedel. I found number 1 of particular interest, as I previously posted an article on the same topic, Are you Team One Space or Two? Enjoy!

1. Use Only One Space Between Sentences

Butterick says you have no choice when deciding how many spaces to include after a sentence-ending period (indeed, after any punctuation mark): one space. He cites multiple typography authorities, including the Chicago Manual of Style, Garner’s The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (Section 4.12), and the 7th Circuit’s “Requirements and Suggestions for Typography in Briefs and Other Papers” (which Sam reviewed in “Legal Writing: Make Your Writing Easier to Read“). True, other writers have objected to the historical foundation of the one-space rule, but I’ve found no good authority (including the local rules of the states and many federal courts to which I’m admitted) that you should include two spaces after a sentence-ending period in court documents.

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2. Never Underline

“Now that we don’t use typewriters, there’s no need to underline.”

Butterick also advises never to underline text for emphasis or otherwise. Like two spaces after a sentence-ending period, underlining is a holdover from the typewriter era, which, as many have forgotten (or in my case never knew) didn’t allow for bold or italics. On a typewriter, underlining was the only way to emphasize text. Now that we don’t use typewriters, there’s no need to underline.

In my former litigation practice, I occasionally underlined text to emphasize particular words because The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation requires case names to be italicized and I wanted to distinguish between the two. My view at that time was that underlining allowed to reader to distinguish easily between italicized case names and the text I wanted to emphasize. But I erred in doing so. Given how ugly and blunt underlining can be, start using italics and bold to emphasize any text that deserves to stand out from the rest.