Posted by Eugene Volokh: Law Review Lara's Advice to Editors: Law Review Lara loves contractions. She thinks they make articles seem more colloquial and thus accessible. She also loves other locutions that she hopes add verve and punch to her articles. (Talking about herself in the third person is an affectation, which she loves only for this column, not for her other work.) She may, of course, be entirely wrong -- maybe instead of getting clarity, she's sacrificing credibility. But she's written quite a few law review articles, and if she hasn't changed her mind by now, she's not terribly likely to.
So ask yourself: If you decontract 100% of her contractions, what will Lara do? She'll probably [1]stet or otherwise reject all those changes. It's her article, and she likes it her way. Other authors who are committed to their styles will do the same. But if you decontract 50% of her contractions, she'll probably accept most, perhaps nearly all, of the changes. She'll assume that you've actually invested real thought into the matter, rather than just applying a flat rule with which she disagrees. She'll think you've found those contractions that seem excessive, distracting, or otherwise inapt, even from the viewpoint of someone who is following her style. And since she realizes that outside editors often have a better sense of future readers' reaction than the author does, she'll often defer to your editorial judgment. In fact, Lara wants you to suggest changes. (She doesn't like commands, unless her work is genuinely mistaken, but she likes suggestions.) It's just that she wants you to suggest changes that will be useful. "Here's how we'd rewrite your article in our writing style" is not useful. "Here are the particular places where we think your writing style, which we know you generally want to stick to, doesn't work and should be revised" is very useful. So if you see that an author is deliberately and repeatedly using some locution, feel free to ask her up front whether she'd be willing to have you systematically remove it. If she says yes, great. But if she says no -- or, more likely, if you don't ask her -- then decontracting every single contraction is wasted work for you (and needless work for her). Use your judgment to decide where you think this usage works and where it doesn't, rather than just applying a flat rule that you suspect the author has no interest in following. References 1. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=stet _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
