New Formatting Rules

I haven’t yet had occasion to file an appellate brief in either the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court this year. But I just noticed the Rules of Court on some formatting issues were amended as of 1/1/20. Typical for California, instead of changing Rule of Court 8.40—which governs the “Form of Filed Documents”—they are instead codified in Rule 8.75 8.74,* which facially deals with the “Format of Electronic Documents.” If we were going to put all the rules on a single issue in one place, we wouldn’t be California.

The changes are generally consistent with the formatting changes applied in Second District opinions since late 2016. 

They call for:

•    Century Schoolbook 13-point font

•    1.5x spacing

•    1 1/2 inch left and right margins, except for quotes and footnotes, 1 inch top and bottom

•    Left aligned, not right justified, text 


*Thanks to the commenter for the correction.

Progress Be Damned....

Khosh v. Staples Constr. Co., No. B268937 (D2d6 Oct. 26, 2016)

Another of D2’s “new font” opinions. I am on record that the Century Schoolbook is an improvement. But I still find the line spacing kind of annoying. It’s not single-spaced with a full break between paragraphs like a Ninth Circuit slip opinion, a Westlaw printout, or a US Supreme Court brief. But it’s also not 1 1/2 like a readable appellate brief. It’s like 1.2, which I find a little distracting for some reason. The paragraph indents are also weirdly large. What’s the point of a 1 1/2” indent?