black-letter style
- noun
- Formal
:
estilo de letra gótica
- The lawyer's black-letter style impressed the senior partners with its clarity and rigor.
Examples
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The contract was written in black-letter style.
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Some students find it challenging to write in black-letter style due to its demanding precision.
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Academic papers often require a black-letter style to clearly outline legal principles.
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Many legal documents require a black-letter style for clarity.
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The lawyer's black-letter style impressed the senior partners with its clarity and rigor.
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Some students find it challenging to write in black-letter style due to its demanding precision.
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Many legal documents require a black-letter style for clarity.
How Formal
Surface Forms
Morphology
black-letter + style
The element 'black-letter' does not transparently combine the literal meanings of 'black' and 'letter' to yield 'formal/legal writing'; instead it is specialized legal jargon (as in 'black-letter law') whose meaning is historical and register-specific. A B1 learner who knows 'black', 'letter', and 'style' would likely interpret this as a typographic or literal phrase and would not predict the legal/formal sense without prior exposure.
Etymology
Black-letter style comes from old law books where the main rules were printed in dark, heavy type called black letter or 'black letter'. Because those printed rules were short, exact, and formal, the phrase now means a strict, very precise way of writing legal ideas.