Getting and giving awards

Lars Walker of Brandywine Books was kind enough to give Writing, Clear and Simple the Premio Dardo Award, which "acknowledges the effort of a particular blogger to transmit cultural, ethical, literary and personal values in his or her writing." (Premio dardo is Italian for “first arrow.”)

I’m humbled to think that WC&S is counted in such good company, and I thank Lars for the honor.

The tricky part is that the “rules” of this award require me to pass it along to 15 other bloggers. That’s going to take a bit of thought, and I may have to do it in spurts.

For starters, I’d like to honor some bloggers who have set out to untangle some of the most wretchedly tortured writing on the planet: legal writing.

• Mister Thorne at Set in Style. Thorne is a “lawyer’s wordsmith,” and offers people in legal publishing excellent advice on how to make what you write and publish as clear and elegant as possible, and critiquing good and bad—and sometimes awful—examples of published legal documents. (By the way, Mister is his first name, but he says you can call him Thorne.)
• Wayne Schiess at legalwriting.net. Wayne directs the legal writing program at the University of Texas School of Law, and is doing his part to stem the tide of legalese by attacking it at its source. Anybody who says that legal documents should be understandable by laymen has my admiration.
• Ray Ward at The (New) Legal Writer. Ray is an appellate lawyer in New Orleans, and he brings good legal-writing advice mixed with interesting tidbits from the law world, all seasoned with the perspective of a practicing attorney. And every once in a while, he tosses in some wit that hits you like Louisiana hot sauce.

I’ll list some award-winning business writing blogs in another post.

Comments

[Lars Walker]

You're welcome.

[Ray Ward]

Thanks for the kind words and the encouragement. I'm just trying to have some fun with the blog, but knowing that other people enjoy it is an excellent bonus.