I. Writing In The Law Office (cont.)

B. Common Grammar Problems (cont.)

It is possible to define prepositions, but for our purposes it's easier to give examples:

A prepositional phrase is a preposition plus complement. The complement can be a phrase, a noun or a pronoun. Occasionally there will be other words in the phrase, such as an article (a, an, or the) or an adjective:

A preposition takes an object. An object should be in the objective case. But when the complement is a phrase, the case of pronouns in that phrase depends on their function within that phrase.

A common misconception is that none of the words in the above table may appear at the end of a sentence (see non-errors, below). Do not overdo it. Once at bedtime a young boy asked his father:

Conjunctions are words used to connect words or constructions. "And" and "but" are conjunctions.

Interjections (using a sentence that would end in an exclamation mark) are common in law offices during the course of the day, but are seldom used in legal writing. The few times we have seen an "!" in a brief, it appeared out-of-place and ill-advised.

English grammar is very dependent on word order. The dangling participle is an example of misuse of English word order. A participle is formed from a verb. It can stand alone as an adjective or be combined with different helping verbs to form different verb tenses.

The present participle ends in "-ing."

The past participle ordinarily ends in "-ed," but it can also be irregular and formed without the use of "-ed."

The perfect participle consists of the word "having" added to a past participle.

The placement of a participle in relation to other parts of the sentence affects what part of grammar the participle becomes.

When a participle appears before a noun or a pronoun, it functions as an adjective:

When it appears after a helping verb, it is a verb:

When it appears in a phrase, the phrase is called a participial phrase.

When a participial phrase begins a sentence, it modifies the subject of the sentence. In the example above, the participial phrase describes Mr. Bananaberry.

Sentences in which the introductory participial phrase does not modify the subject are ungrammatical because they have a dangling participle:

Word order is essential in English because there are few clues as to the function of words in a sentence.

English retains only a few inflections (a change in the form of word, usually by affixation, to indicate a change in its grammatical function), and even those inflections are not terribly useful to show the function of words.

Antagonyms or contranyms are words which have two or more contradictory meanings. When using these types of words in a sentence, it is essential that the correct meaning of the word be apparent from the context of the sentence.

Examples which are used in the legal profession include: