All I Need to Know About Flow I Learned from Pink

We’ve all read legal writing that is stilted and choppy.  Though it may not affect the validity of the arguments made, it does make reading uncomfortable and detracts from the writer’s ethos.  While short sentences come in handy when seeking to emphasize a point, using only short, choppy sentences can give the appearance of incapacity for complex thought[i]—not exactly the impression you want your reader to have.

The solution to choppiness is to increase flow.  “Writing flow refers to the pace, cadence, or rhythm of a piece of writing.”[ii]  And, though there are many ways to increase flow, dovetailing is an easy one to incorporate, and it has the added benefit of ensuring sound logic in your argument.  Dovetailing gets its name from a carpentry joint with overlapping pieces shaped like—you guessed it—a dove’s tail.  As a writing concept, dovetailing is “the overlap of language between two sentences that creates a bridge between those two sentences.”[iii]  This overlap is accomplished by a combination of summation and repetition. And the musical artist Pink is a lyrical carpenter.

In her song “Try,” Pink uses the following dovetailed lyrics:

Why do we fall in love so easy,
even when it’s not right?

Where there is desire, there is gonna be a flame.

Where there is a flame, someone’s bound to get burned.

But just because it burns doesn’t mean you’re gonna die.

You gotta get up and try, try, try.

First, she uses summation by replacing the broader concept of “fall[ing] in love so easy, even when it’s not right” with the single word “desire,” thereby connecting the two ideas.  Then, she then uses lots of repetition to connect the lines in the chorus:  flame/flame, burned/burns, you’re/you.

These tools also work well in legal writing to help build arguments and explain the writer’s reasoning.  Consider the following example of summation, followed by repetition, from Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675, 681 (1986), where the Court held that the First Amendment did not protect lewd and indecent speech made on school grounds:

The role and purpose of the American public school system were well described by two historians, who stated: “[P]ublic education must prepare pupils for citizenship in the Republic…. It must inculcate the habits and manners of civility as values in themselves conducive to happiness and as indispensable to the practice of self-government in the community and the nation.” C. Beard & M. Beard, New Basic History of the United States 228 (1968). In Ambach v. Norwick, 441 U.S. 68, 76–77, 99 S.Ct. 1589, 1594, 60 L.Ed.2d 49 (1979), we echoed the essence of this statement of the objectives of public education as the “inculcat[ion of] fundamental values necessary to the maintenance of a democratic political system.”

These fundamental values of “habits and manners of civility” essential to a democratic society must, of course, include tolerance of divergent political and religious views, even when the views expressed may be unpopular. But these “fundamental values” must also take into account consideration of the sensibilities of others, and, in the case of a school, the sensibilities of fellow students.

(Emphasis added.)

The Court first summarized the identified role and purpose of the public school system, along with its objectives, as the “fundamental values of ‘habits and manners of civility.’”  It then repeated the phrase “fundamental values” to introduce a new concept—that consideration for the sensibilities of others must also be factored into the equation.

Here is another example from Fraser demonstrating repetition:

This Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence has acknowledged limitations on the otherwise absolute interest of the speaker in reaching an unlimited audience where the speech is sexually explicit and the audience may include children. In Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 88 S.Ct. 1274, 20 L.Ed.2d 195 (1968), this Court upheld a New York statute banning the sale of sexually oriented material to minors, even though the material in question was entitled to First Amendment protection with respect to adults. And in addressing the question whether the First Amendment places any limit on the authority of public schools to remove books from a public school library, all Members of the Court, otherwise sharply divided, acknowledged that the school board has the authority to remove books that are vulgar. Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 871–872, 102 S.Ct. 2799, 2814–2815, 73 L.Ed.2d 435 (1982) (plurality opinion); id., at 879–881, 102 S.Ct., at 2814–2815 (BLACKMUN, J., concurring in part and in judgment); id., at 918–920, 102 S.Ct., at 2834–2835 (REHNQUIST, J., dissenting). These cases recognize the obvious concern on the part of parents, and school authorities acting in loco parentis, to protect children—especially in a captive audience—from exposure to sexually explicit, indecent, or lewd speech.

Fraser, 478 U.S. at 684 (emphasis added).

Notice how the first sentence ends with a reference to “sexually explicit” speech before an audience that “may include children,” and the second sentence begins by discussing a ban on the sale of “sexually oriented material to minors.”  Though the wording is not a verbatim repetition, the ideas are the same—the legal implications of exposing youth to lewd material.  The second sentence then ends with a reference to the First Amendment, noting how the same sales ban would be impermissible with respect to adults, while the third sentence begins with a reference to the First Amendment but ends in its application to children in public schools, thus emphasizing the distinction in the First Amendment’s application to youth and adults.  The Court concludes that the overarching goal identified in the cases is “to protect children . . . from exposure to sexually explicit, indecent, or lewd speech.”

By using dovetailing, the Court was able to build the following argument:  It is unquestionably permissible to restrict speech where children might be accidentally exposed to lewd material. Because accidental exposure may be regulated, it follows that intentional exposure through the sale of such material to youth may be regulated.  Because intentional exposure of youth to lewd material by commercial transaction may be regulated, intentional provision of lewd material to youth free of cost may also be regulated.  And, given that the First Amendment would likely prohibit the same regulations with respect to lewd material and adults, the common thread of these cases is to keep lewd material away from youth.  In other words, the Court used dovetailing to establish the principle that the First Amendment does not protect the provision of lewd material to youth in any form.

By leading the reader each step of the way and connecting the links in the chain of reasoning through repetition and summation, the Court made its ultimate conclusion inescapable.  Thus, dovetailing not only improves the flow of writing but also increases the persuasion of the writer’s argument and ensures sound reasoning.

Looking for more ways to increase your flow? 

• Consider using temporal words, such as “first,” “next,” “then,” and “later,” to orient your reader to time.
• Vary your sentence length, using short sentences for emphasis.
• Add in transition words such as “therefore,” “consequently,” or “accordingly” to help your reader draw connections between assertions.
• Structure your paragraphs around topic sentences.

[i] Mark Damen, A Guide to Writing in History and Classics, available at https://www.usu.edu/markdamen/WritingGuide/05choppy.htm.

[ii]MasterClass, Writing Flow: How to Make Your Writing Flow, available at https://www.masterclass.com/articles/writing-flow.

[iii] Laurel Currie Oates and Anne Enquist, The Legal Writing Handbook:  Practice Book, Ex. 23.1A (Aspen 4th ed. 2002).