Synopsis

This new edition of Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage discusses and analyzes modern legal vocabulary and style more thoroughly than any other contemporary reference work. Since the first edition, Bryan A. Garner has drawn on his unrivaled experience as a legal editor to refine his position on legal usage. The new Third Edition remains indispensable: Garner has updated entries throughout, added hundreds of new entries and thousands of new illustrative quotations from judicial opinions and leading lawbooks, revised the selected bibliography, and expanded and updated cross-references to guide readers quickly and easily. A new preface introduces the reader to this edition and discusses content that has been newly incorporated.

Influential writers and editors rely on Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage daily. It is an essential resource for practicing lawyers, legal scholars, and libraries of all sizes and types, functioning as both a style guide and a law dictionary, guiding writers to distinguish between true terms of law and mere jargon and illustrating recommended forms of expression. Common blunders are discussed in ways that will discourage writers from any further use. The origins of frequently used expressions are described with engaging prose. Collectively, there is no better resource for approaching legal writing in a logical, clear, and error-free way.

Library Journal

Despite recent trends toward writing about legal issues by simplifying legal English for nonlawyers, such language still involves jargon as well as numerous style and linguistic questions that are inadequately addressed by standard style manuals and writing guides. This basic legal dictionary and abridged legal style guide will "allow readers to resolve at a glance the many grammatical and stylistic questions that arise in legal writing." Since publishing the book as A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage (1987, 2001; both Oxford), Garner has replaced "uncited illustrative quotations with citable examples"; increased the number of citations and updated them with more recent selections from opinions, statutes, briefs, and classic legal treatises; and provided favorable, unfavorable, and neutral examples, including his own grammatically incorrect passages. The alphabetically arranged, interfiled dictionary and essay entries include information on style, grammar, usage, punctuation, typography, word formation, spelling, and pronunciation as well as a legal lexicography. The title lists legal definitions of ordinary English terms such as cutting edge, legal jargon, and French and Latin words (e.g., cy pres) that are commonly used in the profession. Garner also provides a bibliography of additional writing aides and indexes of writers and periodicals cited. BOTTOM LINE Despite the bibliography's exclusion of the Manual on Usage and Style (Texas Law Review, 11th ed., 2008), this is an excellent companion to the author's Black's Law Dictionary (Thomson-West, 9th ed., 2009) and other legal citation and style resources. An affordable and invaluable reference resource for any library with a writing or law collection, this title will be of interest to lexicographers, legal students, scholars, and writers.—Laurie Selwyn, formerly with Grayson Cty. Law Lib., Sherman, TX

Biography

Bryan Garner is the award-winning author or editor of more than 20 books. He is a prolific lecturer, having taught more than 2,500 writing workshops since the 1991 founding of his company, LawProse, Inc. His works include Garner on Language and Writing, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges (co-written with Justice Antonin Scalia), The Winning Brief, The Elements of Legal Style, and Legal Writing in Plain English. Garner has served as editor-in-chief of Black's Law Dictionary since 1995, and he is the author of the grammar-and-usage chapter in the venerable Chicago Manual of Style.