Karin Ciano, The Daily Record Newswire
I can always spot a former law review editor. Maybe you can too: when you receive a colleague's comments on a draft, have you ever found your abbreviations field-stripped, spaces and punctuation marks overhauled, accompanied by a calling-card in the margin: "T6"?
Ah, good old T6. Table 6, or "T6" as it is affectionately known, is the Bluebook's attempt to tabulate every word that its editors believe ought to be abbreviated when citing a case name in a citation sentence. It is the best known of the Bluebook's 10 tables of the approved abbreviations, far outshining its sisters such as T7 (court names, including "Ct. App." and "App. Ct."), T10 (an abbreviation for every nation) and T12 (months of the year - really?).
Wiser heads than mine have observed that in addition to being prolix the Bluebook's abbreviation tables teem with inconsistencies and consume much time in the learning. Which I suppose is why, once you've invested enough time to learn them, you'll never, never stop correcting them.
But let's recall why we cite in the first place. As Judge Richard Posner observed in his celebrated essay "Goodbye to the Bluebook," a citation should tell the reader exactly enough to let the reader judge the quality of the supporting authority, and to determine whether to accept it, reject it, or look it up. And if it's the last of those three, a citation should also give the address of the authority. A citation system teaches us how to communicate this information while saving space on the page, minimizing reader distraction, and requiring as little thought on everyone's part as possible.
So far, so good. Abbreviations that conserve reader time and effort deserve their place in any citation system. Some, like "F.2d" for "Federal Reporter 2d Series," save space and make sense. As abbreviations become truly universal - think Inc. or NASA or DVD - they need no introduction. They function as words in their own right, identifying particular things with no loss of clarity.
Unfamiliar abbreviations have not yet become words. They save space, but because they have no widely accepted meaning, they inevitably sacrifice clarity. Encountering an unfamiliar abbreviation is like learning a brand new word. Now we'd like to think that's a joyous event, right? As though a reader might be skimming a brief, see an unexpected abbreviation, and with one seamless motion flick open her Bluebook to find the translation, and say admiringly, "Wow, this author really knows his Table 6."
Well, that's not how it works for me. I greet new abbreviations like a driver hits a speed bump: wait, what was that? Do I have to go back there? If the author is compassionate, the abbreviation will be introduced early and used consistently. If not, my options are to figure it out from context, look it up, or ignore it and hope it goes away.
Besides the effort of learning a new word, I face the problem of ambiguity. Quick, guess what these stand for: comp., comm., cnty., cmty. (answers at end of column*). When an abbreviation prunes a word back too far, it could branch out in any direction. So if an abbreviation is both unfamiliar and ambiguous, the reader must spend time either considering which of several meanings attaches - or again, looking it up.
And though it's hard for me to admit, looking it up is not always the best solution. If the Bluebook's many tables don't answer, I will turn to Chicago Manual of Style, which devotes an entire chapter to abbreviations; and that chapter in turn references additional abbreviation dictionaries and resources. The list is long, while life is short.
Because non-obvious abbreviations distract the reader and require more thought, most experts wish we would stop using them. Here's Bryan Garner in Modern American Usage: Abbreviations "are often conveniences for writers but inconveniences for readers. Whenever that is so, the abbreviations should vanish."
And here's Judge Posner: "Don't make the reader puzzle over an abbreviation, as The Bluebook does routinely. . . . It is as if there were a heavy tax on letters, making it costly to write out Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals instead of abbreviating it 'C.G. Ct. Crim. App.'"
Even contract drafters avoid using abbreviations. Here's Kenneth Abrams, from A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting (2d): "In the interest of readability, use whenever possible a defined term consisting of one or more words from an entity's name rather than an initialism." (Quick reminder for the busy: an initialism is an abbreviation composed of first letters of other words, in which each letter is pronounced-such as DVD, ATM, FBI, ADA.)
Not entirely convinced by the weight of published authority, I recently solicited the opinions of some experienced judges. Which is the bigger problem in written submissions, I wondered: too many abbreviations or too few? Do judges ever wish parties would abbreviate more often?
Heck no. My sources confirmed that, while they welcome familiar abbreviations, unfamiliar or unclear ones can cause needless judicial agita. "Often, I have not even finished reading the second page of a brief before I run into a sentence like this: 'The SAC alleges that, by issuing the ERF to IOIC before IOIC had received a DDP, WNDC violated the terms of the PSCC and, in so doing, violated the MDPTA,'" noted one source. "It's like a cryptogram."
Some tips to avoid making your writing look like a word puzzle:
Clarity is the goal. When abbreviations make text clearer (not just shorter), use them. When they don't, don't.
Use only obvious abbreviations. If a first-semester law student wouldn't know it, or if it's not commonly used in conversation, it's not obvious.
If a long name or phrase is frequently repeated within a document, shorten it to a word or two (the "Recovery Act" or the "Act") instead of an initialism.
Within any document, use abbreviations consistently; otherwise a reader may reasonably think you are referring to two different things. But for most of the writing lawyers do, more consistency than that just isn't necessary. Don't fret about using T6, even in your citations: once you're out of law school, remember, the Bluebook is optional.
When in doubt, spell it out.
*Per Table 6, compensation, committee, county, community. See, made you look.
Published: Fri, Feb 06, 2015
