For the grammar police: One space after periods, people

[pokerfan]

99. Does DU need a style manual?

• Use italics, not underlining, for case names and emphasis. Case names are not underlined in the United States Reports, the Solicitor General’s briefs, or law reviews, for good reason. Underlining masks the descenders (the bottom parts of g, j, p, q, and y). This interferes with reading, because we recognize characters by shape. An underscore makes characters look more alike, which not only slows reading but also impairs comprehension.

• Use real typographic quotes (“ and ”) and real apostrophes (’), not foot and inch marks. Reserve straight ticks for feet, inches, and minutes of arc.

• Put only one space after punctuation. The typewriter convention of two spaces is for monospaced type only. When used with proportionally spaced type, extra spaces lead to what typographers call “rivers”—wide, meandering areas of white space up and down a page. Rivers interfere with the eyes’ movement from one word to the next.

• Do not justify your text unless you hyphenate it too. If you fully justify unhyphenated text, rivers result as the word processing or page layout pro- gram adds white space between words so that the margins line up.

• Do not justify monospaced type. Justification is incompatible with equal character widths, the defining feature of a monospaced face. If you want vari- able spacing, choose a proportionally spaced face to start with. Your computer can justify a monospaced face, but it does so by inserting spaces that make for big gaps between (and sometimes within) words. The effects of these spaces can be worse than rivers in proportionally spaced type.

• Indent the first line of each paragraph ¼ inch or less. Big indents disrupt the flow of text. The half-inch indent comes from the tab key on a typewriter. It is never used in professionally set type, where the normal indent is one em (the width of the letter “m”).

• Cut down on long footnotes and long block quotes. Because block quotes and footnotes count toward the type volume limit, these devices do not affect the length of the allowable presentation. A brief with 10% text and 90% foot- notes complies with Rule 32, but it will not be as persuasive as a brief with the opposite ratio.

• Avoid bold type. It is hard to read and almost never necessary. Use italics instead. Bold italic type looks like you are screaming at the reader.

• Avoid setting text in all caps. The convention in some state courts of set- ting the parties’ names in capitals is counterproductive. All-caps text attracts the eye (so does boldface) and makes it harder to read what is in between— yet what lies between the parties’ names is exactly what you want the judge to read. All-caps text in outlines and section captions also is hard to read, even worse than underlining. Capitals all are rectangular, so the reader can’t use shapes (including ascenders and descenders) as cues. Underlined, all- caps, boldface text is almost illegible.

http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/Rules/type.pdf