Judge Kressel has an article in this month’s Illinois Bar Journal explaining why and how he developed “Order Preparation Guidelines” for the local bankruptcy bar. I had read them when he first issued them and upon rereading, I was once again struck with the reasonableness of what he is asking – in short, he is asking us to write as well as a high school senior.

I speak with authority because my youngest child is now a senior. I’ve listened to all three of my kids moan and groan about the cruel expectations of their high school English teachers. My oldest, who is a very talented writer, was indignant when her high school English teacher told the class he would not accept papers with spelling errors. WHAT! And my youngest groaned that the very same teacher, “makes a big deal about every stupid comma.” To date, their complaints have failed to raise my ire, in fact, I applaud him and Judge Kressel.

I don’t mean to suggest I don’t make mistakes. Before the days of spellcheck, I misspelled “environmental” (forgot the “n” in the middle) in every one of my law school applications. As I handed out a class syllabus on the first day of class at Hamline, I noticed my helpful advice, “If you want to give me a massage, call my voicemail …” This was the only class I ever taught where I decided not to distribute the syllabus on the first day!

And I am all for forgetting things I’ve learned. I used to know something about calculus, could diagram the entire Krebs cycle, and could tell you in detail about the escapades of Vasco da Gama. I’d be hard pressed to deliver up any of that knowledge today. But knowing the English language is a different matter – ideally one’s writing should improve with age and experience, not gather dust. To my mother’s horror, I never learned to diagram a sentence, but I have a passable sense of grammar and style and that is all Judge Kressel is asking.

When I was a new associate in a St. Paul law firm, one of the partners, in an act of desperation, visited a nearby bookstore, purchased 30 copies of Elements of Style and left one on everyone’s desk. Interestingly, today, he is also on the bench. And my son, the senior in high school? Well, his first reading assignment was none other than Elements of Style. He grumped and groaned all the way through it. I hope it doesn’t go the way of the Krebs cycle.