On the Swiss lawyers’ mailing list (list owner at owner-swisslawlist@kbx.de), there has been some discussion of a short TV report on invalidity pensions and the alleged greed of lawyers. It was on the programme 10 vor 10 and can be seen on the Internet. It’s possible that a doctor breaches his duty of confidentiality, and there is a lot of criticism of the greed of lawyers that is not backed up in any way. On the other hand, someone pointed out that the story that this lawyer will do anything to get benefits for his clients will probably bring him work.

I was most interested in this link to see actual broadcasts partly in High German and partly in Swiss German.

Beim Schweizer Fernsehen im Internet kann man den Beitrag noch sehen, über den sich Schweizer Anwälte in der swisslaw Mailingliste zu Recht aufregen. Anscheinend hat der Arzt, der eventuell seine Schweigepflicht verletzt hat, jetzt seine Praxis aufgegeben mit der Begründung, dass er es nicht mehr aushalte, von Anwaelten missbraucht zu werden (er empfiehlt Computerarbeit für einen Halswirbelsäulegeschädigten).

Das Link interessiert mich als Möglichkeit, Beiträge mit Schweizerdeutsch zu sehen.

Following on from a discussion on Handakte WebLAWg on style, here are some style guides:

For the USA:
The Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Style Manual website also has FAQs, for example on how to write Internet and Web terms, although I prefer email to e-mail

For the UK:
The Oxford Style Manual (this consists of the Oxford Guide to Style and The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors in one volume, which may be a bit unwieldy – I haven’t seen it).

Many newspapers have online style guides:
The Guardian
The Times (aka The London Times!)
Here is part of the Times one: The Times on courts of law.

The Economist Style Guide

The EU has an online English style guide.

BBC News Style Guide
(click on ‘Open Guide 1’)

Sweet & Maxwell (British legal publisher) House Style Guide.

There are some links about style in the original Joi Ito entry of January 18th. Note that the Chicago Manual of Style is more about formal requirements, whereas Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (mentioned in a comment) is about writing style.

Then there is writing in a way that makes sense on the Web. Jakob Nielsen is a good source there.

Gallery of “Misused” Quotation Marks

Example:

bq. A sign at the swimming pool at Reed College in Portland, OR asks you to:
Please “shower” before entering the pool.
Maybe they knew that no one bothers with more than a quick rinse.
I hope they don’t get a summons from the Board of “Health.”

bq. I got this “auto”-reply e-mail from Bizrate.com:
Just responding to let you know that a “human” reads each and every comment to BizRate.com!
Great! I feel much “better” knowing that.
Me too. Here I was thinking the e-mail was handled by some kind of robot.

The Observer has an article on authors who have praised their own works on amazon.com.

Amazon reviews can be weird. I recently read one praising the Oxford Style Manual, with two or three spelling mistakes in it. My favourite was a student at a British university who praised his professor’s book on criminal law saying he slept with it under his pillow (perhaps this was written by the professor himself?).

Here it is:

bq. Reviewer: (lwa98rcl@shef.ac.uk) from Probably the best university in the world
Once again Mr Jefferson of the acclaimed law department within the University of Sheffield has produced a work of unsurpassable quality. Rarely has a book of such accessibility and depth of reasoning been available to undergraduates. Jefferson uses his inimitable writing style to maximum effect, sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking but always lightning quick and razor sharp. Readers will feel priviledged to have read this book. I keep mine under the pillow.

(0 out of 3 people found the review helpful)

The book, Criminal Law by Michael Jefferson, is in its sixth edition and has a picture of Dixon of Dock Green, a 1950s/1960s TV policeman, on the cover.
Apparently it was amazon’s Canadian site that revealed the reviewers’ real identities.

There can be even more value in amazon reviews:

bq. [Lisa] Jardine, a former chairwoman of the Man Booker Prize judging panel, added: ‘In America, Amazon review-watching is a sport. There have been some fantastic indiscretions. One ex-wife of an American author put the history of his infidelities in her review of his book. It was breathtaking.’

In a discussion about the House of Commons on FLEFO (CompuServe), Mike Ellis mentioned this general brochure (G7), Some Traditions and Customs of the House. It’s an excellent collection of trivia:

bq. In general, the description used is “the Honourable Member for . . .”. However, Privy Councillors (senior Ministers, past or present, and other senior Members) are “the Right Honourable Member for … “. Less frequently heard these days are “the Noble Lord, the Member for … “, which is used for a Member with a courtesy title (e.g. the son of a duke, marquess or earl) who sits in the House of Commons, or an Irish peer, “the Honourable Baronet for … “. Following recommendations made by the Modernisation Committee the House agreed that some of the embellishments which are added to the standard form of address, such as “gallant” (used for Members who have been commissioned officers in the forces) and “learned” (used for Members who are senior barristers) should be abandoned. Often the constituency is omitted, and a Member will be described as “the Honourable Member who spoke last”, “the Right Honourable Lady opposite”, “the Honourable Member below the gangway”, etc. In most cases Hansard will expand these phrases into the form “the Honourable Member for Ockendon (Mr Bloggs)” in order to avoid ambiguity in the printed record of debates. …

bq. Members may speak only if called by the Chair. They are called by name, and must sit down if the Speaker rises to his or her feet (e.g. to call for order, or to interrupt the debate). To catch the Speaker’s eye, Members commonly rise or half-rise from their seats, but if they are not called, they have no redress.

This is some general knowledge that would have helped a German law student whose dissertation I was reading recently. The topic was the change of style in judicial decisions in England, France and Germany. She refers to the form of address in the House of Lords: ‘my noble and learned friend Lord …’, and concludes that this is not a mere convention but shows genuine respect for a fellow-judge – proved by the generally respectful tone:

bq. Dass es sich dabei nicht allein um eine zu bloßer Konvention erstarrte Höflichkeitsfloskel handelt, sondern um einen Ausdruck der tatsächlichen Wertschätzung des Fachkollegen, bezeugt der ganz generell festzustellende respektvolle Umgangston.

(Jutta Lashöfer, Zum Stilwandel in richterlichen Entscheidungen, 1992 ISBN 3-89325-124-3 or 0932-4763 – quite an interesting book).

Of course, noble = a Lord, and learned = a lawyer, so the phrase is absolutely conventional.

The Guardian (which used to be the Manchester Guardian, at least when I was at school) has its 1928 style guide online as a PDF file. The yellowing pages have been scanned.

Sections include Parliamentary (how to punctuate ‘Hear, hear!’ – I associate this more with The Times than The Guardian; Irish Free State parliament; word division; cricket; football; household servants (Cook general, housemaid, kitchen-maid, housemaid waitress, between-maid, house parlour-maid, nursery maid, children’s maid); and foreign and Welsh publications.