Make them as easy to read and carry as possible. Thus,
If it's a book manuscript, send it double-sided, and stapled or otherwise bound, rather than as a thick stack of single-sided pages.
Print it single-spaced with wide margins, like a published work. There's a reason that this is the way journals and books are published, and the reason isn't just saving space -- my sense is that such text is easier to read. Double-spaced text may be useful when you're expecting lots of interlineated comments, but not otherwise.
Use a proportionally spaced font, both for the text and the footnotes, rather than a typewriter font.
Maybe these are just my idiosyncratic reactions -- please let me know if that's so. But I suspect not; it seems to me that the traditional journal/book layout and format is inherently easier to read than the alternatives I recommenda gainst.
I wish judges would change the standard rules for pleadings and briefs to require single-spaced documents with bigger margins. Double spaced pleadings just mean that judges get less-readable material with less information per page. It also means they have to carry around bigger stacks of briefs if they take work home. And it's not as if they're going to send us back an edited copy.
Of course, the judges would have to change page limits, but that's not a big deal.
The only thing about the traditional journal/book layout that I find more difficult to read is full justification. I find the difference in word spacing from line to line to be annoying. I also think jagged edges help guide the reader from one line to the next. But maybe these are just my idiosyncratic reactions.
Sometimes people drive me nuts using all kinds of fancy fonts when generating word processor documents. Here, fonts like the standard Times New Roman, Bookman, etc. were carefully designed and developed by professional printers to be as easily readable as they could make it, and instead of taking advantage of this people go and use some inscrutable faux-handwriting font. Pet peeve.
Count me in the minority here. Double spacing, and single sided (though I do want it bound somehow) make things much easier to read. It seriously boggles me that someone would think otherwise...but viva la difference.
My favorite feature in modern word processors is the ability to print documents with two pages to each 8 1/2 x 11 sheet - just about paperback size. My colleagues laugh at me and ask if I'm a paper miser, but when corporate sends a 20-page memo, I usually finish reading it about the same time they finish making sure they took the pages off the printer in the right order.
Eugene is 99.9% right. Get rid of the double spacing. Go for the shorter lines. Use a proportional font. But when you're done, send it to me as a PDF and I'll print it the way I want it. Or, failing that, zap me an e-mail and ask me which way I'd prefer to receive it. This is the internet age, isn't it?
Why would I want to chop down a bunch of trees just to write a blurb for your book?
Now, if I have to deal with paper, Eugene's suggestions as amended by Public_Defender do produce the most readable result, but really.....
(1) Use footnotes, not endnotes, and keep figures in place. Endnotes are a huge pain in the neck justified only by primitive publishing technology. There is no excuse for them now, in drafts or in final form. Similarly, having to hunt down separate figures is a distraction for which there is no longer any need.
(2) Do not rely on subtle differences in typography (e.g. italic vs. normal slant), grey level, or color, unless you are really sure that the difference will be readily discernible. I hate maps and charts in which regions are distinguished by grey levels or differences in color that come out as differences in grey level when printed in black and white, in which it is difficult or impossible to make out the intended distinction.
"Sooo 80's"? I'm practicing in front of judges who are sooo 60's.
Once, I asked a federal clerk whether it would make more sense to submit things single spaced now that everything is filed electronically (and presumably read on a screen). Silly me, she said, they print everything off before they read it.
http://rasmusen.org/GI/reader/writing.pdf for lots of advice. Some things I will add here:
1. Put your email, fax, mailing address, phone number on the cover page, to make commenting easier.
2. Write an abstract of one paragraph.
3. Put all figures and tables in the text, not at the end (which, as with endnotes, is good for old-fashioned typesetting but nothing else).
4. Number all your pages and equations.
5. Especially for lawyers and contrary to their conventional style: have a list of references and cases at the end, as well as in footnotes. That way the reader can quickly see if you're missing a key reference or case that he knows about.
Then you're not reading a draft, I should think. "Galley- The pre-publication copies sent to the author for final proofreading or to reviewers for pre-publication reviews."
Having a table of authorties is not contrary to the conventional style, at least conventional brief-writing. Appellate court rules require that attorneys put a table of authorities at the begining of every brief. The style and organization differ from court to court, but with the possible exception of an oddball jurisdiction or two, that's the universal style of appellate briefing.
I admit, though, that footnoting is against the conventional style of attorneys. I hate footnotes in briefs. Every time you have a citation, you have to lose your place in the text to check the footnote to understand the value of the sentence you just read.