Legal Memo advice for 1L? Forum

[JazzOne]

I don't know why I thought of this right now, but it has been bugging me since I started law school. Did everyone besides me learn in undergrad that there should be two spaces after every sentence? I lost a few points on the first memo because I only used one space between sentences. When I talked to my friends about it, they looked at me like I was crazy. I wrote a lot of papers in undergrad and never had a problem.

The double space technique is ingrained now, but I am still curious about this. Any takers?

It's one space for variable-width fonts (Times New Roman, Calibri, Arial, etc.) and two spaces for fixed-width fonts (Courier New). That's the rule, and I think Strunk & White may agree, but I haven't checked.

I didn't know that. I thought some disciplines preferred "one" over "two" and vice versa.n Thank goodness legal writing requires using 2 spaces. I'm always happy to do whatever I can to make my papers longer--they're always so short .

How many pages was your discussion section?

[Pizon]

AP style is one. The entire internet uses one. I still use two, but it makes me feel inferior sometimes.

The Internet "uses one" because HTML automatically removes extra spaces from text. You could hit the spacebar five times after each sentence, and there'd still be only one space in between.

OP, I think I was taught to use two spaces in junior high school. I was also taught to always Justify papers (as opposed to Left aligning). In law school, most people seem to Left align. Does anyone else here always Justify, unless specifically requested not to?

[engineer]

Does anyone else here always Justify, unless specifically requested not to?

Yeah, I definitely do. It bothers me that we're not allowed to do that for memos/briefs...the legal world is SO far behind technologically.

[LjakW]

I always Justify, nobody's ever complained.

[OperaAttorney]

I don't know why I thought of this right now, but it has been bugging me since I started law school. Did everyone besides me learn in undergrad that there should be two spaces after every sentence? I lost a few points on the first memo because I only used one space between sentences. When I talked to my friends about it, they looked at me like I was crazy. I wrote a lot of papers in undergrad and never had a problem.

The double space technique is ingrained now, but I am still curious about this. Any takers?

It's one space for variable-width fonts (Times New Roman, Calibri, Arial, etc.) and two spaces for fixed-width fonts (Courier New). That's the rule, and I think Strunk & White may agree, but I haven't checked.

I didn't know that. I thought some disciplines preferred "one" over "two" and vice versa.n Thank goodness legal writing requires using 2 spaces. I'm always happy to do whatever I can to make my papers longer--they're always so short .

How many pages was your discussion section?

For last semester's final discussion section, I wrote 6.75 pages. I think we had a 10-page limit. But I said all I had to say. I'm also lazy .

I'm not sure how long this memo's discussion will be. Now that we have an extension, I've decided to revamp it. I've already trimmed it by 1 page. (Yay!) By Thursday, I expect it to be shorter.