Legal briefs and motions are many times filled with invectives against the other party, opposing counsel, or even the court. Frankly, shrill invectives are not sharp persuasive tools and the best tone for any legal document is a plain one. Consider this from Jacques Barzun:
[T]he best tone is the tone called plain, unaffected, unadorned. . . . It is the most difficult of all tones, and also the most adaptable. When you can write plain, you can trust yourself in special effects. The plain tone is that of Lincoln always, that of Thoreau, Emerson, William James, Mark Twain, “Mr. Dooley,” Fitzgerald, and Hemingway at their best. It is the tone Whitman urged on his contemporaries: “The art of art, the glory of expression . . . is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity . . . nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. Jacques Barzun, Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers 90 (rev. ed. 1985).
