When I ask my audiences which words or phrases they like to cut from their drafts, someone often mentions the word “that.”
Not so fast, I suggest.
Read this sentence to see why:
After an evidentiary hearing, the court found Buffalo Wild Wings was not a fast-food restaurant and, hence, was not covered by the restrictive covenant.
I plucked this example from the first pages of an Illinois Court of Appeals opinion on Buffalo Wild Wings and on trailing modifiers in restrictive covenants (don’t ask).
In this sentence, and in millions more just like it, cutting “that” does more harm than good.
After all, the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant wasn’t lost, so the court didn’t “find” it, despite what the court suggests.
Incidentally, we should also change “hence” to “thus” and cut the pair of commas.
So we end up with something like this:
After an evidentiary hearing, the court found that Buffalo Wild Wings was not a fast-food restaurant and thus was not covered by the restrictive covenant.
Other sentences in the opinion need similar fixes:
The court found the action was to determine the consequences of future action: in the event Reed returned the dozer, would Roland be obligated to accept it and return the purchase price?
The court didn’t find a lost action here; it found that the action had an aim.
Lopax appeals the court’s decisions (1) the restrictive covenant covered only fast-food restaurants serving primarily chicken, (2) the declaratory-judgment action was not barred by the doctrine of nonliability for past conduct, . . .
Lopax, for its part, didn’t appeal a “decision the restrictive covenant covered” (whatever that might mean); it appealed from a decision that the covenant covered a certain kind of restaurant.
Bottom line: give “that” a break. By doing so, you’ll be following the lead of our Supreme Court:
Anthony Kennedy, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, opinion:
Austin had held that Congress could prohibit independent expenditures for political speech based on the speaker’s corporate identity.
John Paul Stevens, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, dissent:
Yet in a variety of contexts, we have held that speech can be regulated differentially on account of the speaker’s identity, when identity is understood in categorical or institutional terms.
We have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment, and many legal scholars have long since rejected the concession theory of the corporation.
And our new Solicitor General:
Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., FCC v. Fox Television Stations, merits brief:
Fox contends that past Commission orders involving those words could not have alerted it that the Billboard Music Awards broadcasts would be considered indecent because the prior orders involved the “repeated[]” use of the expletives.
Moreover, many programs are not rated at all, and even for rated programs, a recent study found that “only 5% of parents felt that television ratings were always accurate.”
While acknowledging that its own standards “generally do not permit” broadcast of the F-Word or S-Word, Fox contends that those standards are “irrelevant to the vagueness analysis.”
Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., HHS v. Florida, merits brief:
In particular, Congress found that without a minimum coverage provision, “many individuals would wait to purchase health insurance until they needed care,” taking advantage of the Act’s guaranteed-issue and community rating provisions, thereby driving up costs in the non-group market (and, indeed, threatening the viability of that market).
And even the Wall Street Journal:
The Georgia Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling concludes that the 1994 state law “restricts speech in violation of the free speech clauses” of the U.S. and Georgia constitutions.1
In congressional testimony on Thursday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that low rates penalize savers.2
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you never cut “that.” I’m simply suggesting that confusing the reader even for a second is far worse than including one short four-letter word. So while “The court found the bank” can mislead, “I suggest you call him” cannot.
And that’s enough of “that.”
- Wall Street Journal, “Georgia Court Overturns Law Restricting Assisted Suicide,” Feb. 6, 2012.
- Wall Street Journal, “Itchy Investors Ramp Up the Risk,” Feb. 6, 2012.
Ross Guberman is the founder and president of Legal Writing Pro, an advanced legal-writing training and consulting firm. He has conducted more than a thousand programs on three continents for many of the largest and most prestigious law firms and for dozens of state and federal agencies and bar associations. Ross is also a Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School, where he teaches an advanced seminar on drafting and writing strategy. When you see the logo, you’re reading an article from Legal Writing Pro, where the article originally appeared.
