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Possessive apostrophes for the win
The chances of finding an error in the New Yorker are vanishingly small – once every few years, in my experience (and I am a cover-to-cover New Yorker reader). But it was with no sense of joy – no “gotcha” – that I discovered in its pages the mistake highlighted above. Far from it. The… Continue reading
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Screenshot of the day
Should a group of people be referred to in the singular (“it”) or the plural (“they”)? This is a thorny question – largely because it doesn’t really have a right or wrong answer. Rare is the lengthy judgment in which I don’t find some combination of, say, “the jury was” and “the jury were”, or… Continue reading
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What’s in a name, NSWCCA edition
Open warfare has broken out* over what to call the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal. In the red corner, we have: “Court of Criminal Appeal of New South Wales”. In the blue corner, let’s hear it for: “Court of Criminal Appeal of the Supreme Court of New South Wales”. They both seem plausible.… Continue reading
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“Fifteen items or less”: a forensic examination
We all know the annoying pedant standing in the express line at the supermarket: “It’s not ’15 items or less’, it’s ’15 items or fewer’.” Spoken, almost invariably, with a level of confidence that, if you ask me, is not necessarily warranted. That there is a difference between “fewer” and “less” seems to be correct.… Continue reading
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All in a day’s work
What if one day, while you were proofing a judgment, it dawned on you that the judge had misread a legislative provision? They hadn’t just described it badly, or in a way that was ambiguous or unclear; they had got it wrong. That’s a tough one. It’s not your job, in proofing a judgment, to… Continue reading
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Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
(With apologies to David Bowie. Or, if you prefer, Flight of the Conchords.) This is a story about the name of a case. In 2020, the High Court handed down its decision in an appeal matter called Mondelez Australia. The fixed and immutable practice of the Court in an appeal – except when it isn’t… Continue reading
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Artificial what, now?
“Artificial intelligence” is everywhere these days; it’s the world’s most popular oxymoron. Let’s break it down into its constituent parts. Artificial intelligence is certainly artificial. But is it “intelligence”? I am not so sure. AI, we have been led to believe, is going to take away all of our jobs. Is it going to take… Continue reading
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Screenshot of the day
The central what, now? “Tenet”. The word is “tenet”. The President himself would be the “central tenant” of his domestic agenda (although he would presumably see himself as the landlord). It’s as if the Times was in such a rush to make copy on the Supreme Court’s tariffs decision that its copy editors couldn’t keep… Continue reading
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Truth or consequences
Like the proverbial frog in the slowly warming water, it has been gradually dawning on me that I don’t know the difference between “consequently” and “consequentially”. The judges that I work for seem to alternate between the two, and, for better or worse, I have been inclined to let the two words land as they… Continue reading
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Trans-Atlantic adventures in book publishing
The High Court style guide has a somewhat terse approach to book citations. No first names or initials, just a surname. (Exceptions are occasionally made, if not necessarily encouraged, in relation to names attaching to more than one prominent author. “Stone”, for example. Or “Wade”.) And edition numbers are only given for editions other than… Continue reading
