“In my past piece on Psystar’s latest Court filing, I was once again highly critical of the grammatical sloppiness found therein. I went through Psystar’s Response to Apple’s Amended Complaint and noted multiple errors line by line. While this case is in stasis at the moment pending an upcoming January hearing on Psystar’s Motion for Leave to Amend and the holidays, I will continue to highlight similar deficiencies. I was quite surprised that after my initial criticisms Psystar’s attorneys did not immediately attempt to rectify these filings with the Court. Out of a regard for the same profession to which I belong, I did not immediately subject the filings to a closer critique. Since Psystar’s attorneys have not found it necessary to correct the incredibly sloppy work product filed with the Court in the intervening weeks and actually filed another deficient pleading, I feel quite free to engage in this amplified scrutiny,” World of Apple reports.
“My subject in this article is Psystar’s Notice of and Motion for Leave to Amend. Rather than outlining the numerous grammatical and spelling errors in list format, I took this opportunity to try a product by Smile on my Mac called PDF Pen and marked up this filing in living colour with red annotations describing the errors I found,” World of Apple reports.
Full article, including link to the marked-up document, here.
[Attribution: MacNN. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Judge Bork” for the heads up.]
Apple’s believes there’s some fat money behind these clowns. Interestingly enough, even that fat money isn’t buying top lawyers, at least not for this filing. I read through that PDF and omissions are the result of just incredibly sloppy effort.
All other things being equal, no self-respecting judge will ignore these (not even sub-consciously).
In the end, it’s probably just about publicity and as they say, any publicity is good publicity, as long as your name is spelt correctly (which, ironically enough, isn’t in this filing; they keep referring to PsyStar, whereas the company name is Psystar…).
You know all those people who love to arrogantly proclaim that nobody has a right to correct anyone’s spelling in the comments posted here? I wonder how they’ll react to this story.
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When you look at the actual comments he makes, most of them are lame. He makes a bid deal about one extra space, or a word that is capitalized in one place but not in another.
Yet, his comments appear in all caps (commonly considered bad taste), and in his final rant he italicizes all of the text except one letter. I thought I was ‘anal’, but this guy takes the cake!
Funny, he asks for input, but there is nowhere on his site to leave comments.
@ GizmoDan,
I read that and was horrified. Those are educated lawyers?
That kind of sloppiness is inexcusable. I would fire them and you too if you produced work like that for me.
“Funny, he asks for input, but there is nowhere on his site to leave comments.”
Um… What about the prominent “Comments and Trackbacks” block directly below the list of related posts? The one with the fields for name, email, website, a comment field, and a “Submit Comment” button.
There is a place in the bottom of his article to write your comments.
His arguments aren’t lame, they point out grammatical mistakes which shouldn’t be present in a professional document.
What if he italicizes everything except for one letter? He isn’t submitting his document to a court or anything unlike PysStar’s lawyers who misspelled their client’s name!
These glitches are not trivial. There is a manual of style for legal writing (the so-called “blue book” and the author of the piece should read it again, because although he is correct in pointing out numerous instances of egregious sloppiness, he needs a refresher on the rules for periods inside parentheticals in citations. Most of the instances cited as having incorrect placement of periods are, in fact, correct. Also the comment about n-dashes only applies to typeset briefs (e.g., to the Supreme Court) and not to word-processed briefs, at lease in the courts with which I’m familiar. Also, unlike “Larry” they didn’t misspell their client’s name, they merely chose to adopt their client’s choice of capitalization, which is wholly appropriate.
Sloppy as it may be, this guy is not qualified to proofread it. He flagged “its” in “Apple’s Use of the DMCA to Extend its Copyrights.” Does he think it should be it’s? There is no apostrophe in the possessive it. It’s is a contraction for it is.
@JohnLee
No, he was highlighting that on “its” had an initial cap and the second one was all lower case. His point was consistency, not spelling.
Not having read many court docs of this nature (thank God) I don’t know how the court views the type of errors noted. I will take view of apparent law practitioners here that it does.
That should be “one “its”” not “on its” in my previous post. I need this guy to proof my comments!
@JohnLee
I think “its” is flagged because in that sentence the “it” actually refers to DMCA and not Apple.
Wait, so this means no Paystar in time for Christmas?
ROFLOL @ theloniousMac!
bobsyeruncle:
On their website, it is spelled “Psystar”.
I’m with GizmoDan. I’m a pedantic a’hole too when it comes to other writers’ sloppiness but this critique goes too far and contains errors of its own. (Glass houses…stones…)
For example: “Client’s name is spelled wrong” should be “wrongly”.
“Bases” might not be incorrect, if the original author saw more than one “basis for dismissal”.
Also, the critic overlooks some errors I saw: “A series of state law claims were likewise dismissed” should be “was”. Same for “None of those factors are present here.” Should be “is”.
And my favorite grump: “facsimile”. To me, a fax machine is not a facsimile machine, it’s a real machine. Calling it a facsimile is uneducated pomposity.
More examples would be tiresome but there are more.
@grh:
“Same for “None of those factors are present here.” Should be “is”…”
Both are correct.
@Gabriel
This is not a court filing. Nobody here is getting payed $150 an hour to write these comments. Small deference.
@ Larry: Sorry, you are wrong. Go back to school.
“None” is short for “not one”. Singular.
‘None’ means ‘not one’, but it’s not short for it. There’s a difference.
‘Factors’ is a count noun so either can be used.
Also:
http://blogsarchive.newsobserver.com/grammar/index.php?title=none_not_one_not_any_nary_a_one&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxnoneis.html
Next time, don’t be so rude.