A few years ago, I ran a European program for college students. I worked then with smart, savvy experts to develop a course that would use the wine industry as a lens through which to study the European Union. The prospect that actual wine could also be served as a class aid was not entirely absent from our reflections, and seemed a good selling point.  There was also an implicit promise that we could help a collegiate crowd take away from France a bit of style and connoisseurship, presented without snobbery or condescension. We were open-minded and had expected some students to be unfamiliar with wine. But we were unprepared for a practice then-current among Spanish students: mixing red wine with cola, served over ice. This hardly seemed imaginable, but was perfectly normal for Spanish students. I was dumbstruck. I was at an impasse, unable to move forward and unsure of which direction to turn.

The episode came to mind when I ran into a similar impasse in a legal writing workshop that I teach.

I stress guidelines or good (best?) practices: prefer the active voice; try to keep average sentence length under 20 words; avoid easily misused words or phrases, such as "shall" or "it being understood"; edit your writing systematically.

But French audiences seek out rules. Rules make their eyes bright as flash bulbs; guidelines make their eyes glaze over. This is akin to an impasse for me, because:

  • I personally have little to add to a rule;
  • Rules that I like –such as the serial comma (A, B, or C)– are routinely flaunted, including by writers beyond reproach;
  • Rules that are part of language lore –such as the prohibition against splitting infinitives or words that make up a verb ("I will faithfully execute the office")– turn out not to be rules at all.