Make a Brief Fit the Page Limit

Dear Legal Writer, This is a 3-step trick I do to cut words to make a brief fit the page limit:

1️⃣ STEP 1: Fully justify your body text.

▪️ Set the format for all paragraphs so the text ending at the right margin makes a perfectly straight line.

—When you fully justify, you often cut a few lines of text per document.

That’s because full justification fits more letters per line than the default left justification.

(You can put things back to left justify after you’ve cut words, if needed.)

2️⃣ STEP 2: Attack each paragraph separately.

▪️ Working from the end of the document and starting at the end of the last paragraph, systematically attack each paragraph that extends onto its final line by only a word or two.

—Your goal is now compartmentalized and easier to see.

3️⃣ STEP 3: Cut words.

▪️ Try to cut enough words from each paragraph so that it does not continue to stretch onto that last line.

A/ My first move is to attack each long word, one by one. Use a thesaurus. I bet you can find some shorter synonyms for your long words that will work just as well.

B/ Next, I attack long sentences.

C/ Finally, I do another full read of the paragraph from the beginning of it to catch any cutting options I missed and to make sure the edits I made sound OK.

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You can make it kind of a game, with each paragraph presenting its own little puzzle for how to rephrase things to save space.

Playing around with synonyms can be fun, too!

Try it!

Let me know how it works for you.

Fondly,

💌 Amanda

🗳️ What thesaurus is your go-to?

 — I really like OneLook, but I’d love to experiment with other options.