What is the 'it'?

The blog of the book

  • Reader’s questions

    [No, that is not a misplaced apostrophe. All of my questions seem to come from one reader. They know who they are.] Not long before I disappeared for eye surgery – which has gone very well, thank you for asking – I found myself fielding some citation questions concerning a High Court case called New Continue reading

  • Be seein’ ya

    There will now be a break in transmission, as I go off to have the lenses in my eyes replaced with bionic lenses. Yes, I am about to become the Six Million Dollar Stan. (Sorry.) I have of late been struggling to distinguish full stops from commas, and semicolons from colons. Also, the dots at Continue reading

  • The strange case of Re Lehrer and the Real Property Act

    Your judge wants to cite the case of Re Lehrer and the Real Property Act – or, for that matter, any case reported in the State Reports of New South Wales between 1956 and 1963. Re Lehrer is a 1960 decision of the New South Wales Supreme Court. The judge has found a reference to Continue reading

  • The perils of legislative drafting

    Look, there is nothing I like more than a complex piece of legislation. A well-drafted provision can be very satisfying; sometimes even the most elaborate piece of statute law just works. But then, occasionally I see a provision like this one, from the Victorian Evidence Act 2008, and my heart sinks: “‘Disclosure order’ means an Continue reading

  • Am I a comma nerd? We are about to find out.

    Much of the time, commas are little more than convenient signalling devices, showing the reader how the various components of a sentence are supposed to work together. Often enough, the reader is going to be able to figure out what the sentence is telling them even if there is not a comma in sight. Occasionally, Continue reading

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  • Leongatha mushrooms: my story

    The dust has settled on the “trial of the century”. The jurors have gone back to their previous lives (and possibly wishing/pretending that none of this had ever happened). The “sleepy hollows” of Morwell and Leongatha are returning to their former state of general somnambulism. This means that the time has come for me to Continue reading

  • Walking backwards into the future

    A couple of days ago Number Two Son messaged me (as they say). He is an engineer; I’ve never known him to be especially alive to the nuances and quirks of the English language. He had a question: should he be using “backwards/forwards” or “backward/forward”? He caught me while I was out on a walk, Continue reading

  • I got them old CLR side title blues again

    Quality control at the Commonwealth Law Reports has always been admirably high. But occasionally they do get something wrong. If your judge were to refer in a judgment to the case of R v Quinn; Ex parte Consolidated Foods Corporation (1977) 138 CLR 1, and if, in proofing that judgment, you were diligently to follow Continue reading

  • In defence of the semicolon

    Recent media reports – no, I’m not going to link to any; it only encourages them – would have you believe that the semicolon is about to go the way of the dodo. But, to borrow the supposed words of Mark Twain, reports of its demise might be greatly exaggerated. Admittedly, examples of bad semicolon Continue reading

  • Pseudonymously yours

    Riddle me this, Batman: when is an anonymisation not an anonymisation? Answer: when it is somebody’s name, and it only looks like an anonymisation. Exhibit one: “SKA” or “Ska”? The latter is a dance craze from Jamaica that was popular in London circa 1980. You may have heard of Madness. (See above.) Or The Specials. Continue reading