Elements of Legal Style 2nd Edition

When Bryan A. Garner's award-winning Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage appeared in 1987, it was widely acclaimed throughout the English-speaking world. Just in the U.S., Harvard Law Review called it "an authoritative guide" that "all legal writers will find...invaluable." ABA Journal hailed it as "a work of learning, taste, care, and wit"; and the Michigan Bar Journal called it "a landmark reference." Garner modeled that volume after Fowler's venerable Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Now he has written a new writing guide, this one inspired by Strunk and White's classic book, The Elements of Style.

Like the Strunk and White book, The Elements of Legal Style offers authoritative, down-to-earth, and often witty advice on a broad array of writing concerns, from basic grammatical rules to enhancing clarity, force, and persuasiveness. Unlike Strunk and White, it is written for lawyers, law students, judges and their law clerks--for anyone who writes in and about the law. With broad experience as a practitioner, academic, and writing consultant, Garner knows first hand where legal writing goes wrong, and he pays particular attention to these trouble spots. He not only reveals how and why lawyers spill their words vervbosely, he also memorably shows how lawyers can clean up their spills. In a section on commonly misused words in law, Garner crisply guides readers through the hazards of legal wordchoice. Throughout the book, Garner draws on splendid and not-so-splendid examples of legal prose to illustrate his points, quoting such eminenences as Justice Holmes, Clarence Darrow, William Prosser, Fred Rodell, Ronald Dworkin, Laurence H. Tribe, and Justice Scalia.

Fred Rodell, the Yale law professor, once wrote that "90 per cent of American scholars and at least 99.44 per cent of American legal scholars not only do not know how to write simply; they do not know how to write." Rodell exaggerated for comic effect, of course, but legal writing certainly needs improvement. In The Elements of Legal Style, Bryan Garner shows the way.

"Garner has given to the legal profession [an] extraordinary book....Invaluable." South Dakota Law Review

"Bryan Garner...is rapidly becoming — if he's not there already — America's foremost authority on language and the law." Barrister

"An expanded amd more relaxed edition of his 1991 sourcebook." William Safire, New York Times Magazine

Since the first edition was published in 1991, The Elements of Legal Style has established itself as the authoritative guide on all the major issues of writing style in law. Now its coverage has been expanded in this new edition, which features additional sections, many more examples, and a thoroughly researched appendix that contains 80 major statements on prose style what it is and how to attain it.

Inspired by Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, this book clearly (often wittily) explains the full range of what legal writers need to know: mechanics, word choice, structure, and rhetoric, as well as all the special conventions that legal writers should follow in using headings, defined terms, quotations, and many other devices. The Elements of Legal Style, 2nd Edition is written for lawyers, law students, judges, and their law clerks — and for anyone who writes in and about the law. With broad experience as a practitioner, academic, and writing consultant, Bryan Garner knows firsthand where legal writing so often goes wrong, and he pays particular attention to these trouble spots.

With expanded coverage in this new edition, The Elements of Legal Style features additional sections, many more examples, and a thoroughly researched appendix that contains 80 major statements on prose style--what it is and how to attain it.

Inspired by Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, this book clearly (often wittily) explains the full range of what legal writers need to know: mechanics, word choice, structure, and rhetoric, as well as all the special conventions that legal writers should follow in using headings, defined terms, quotations, and many other devices. Garner also provides abundant examples from the best legal writers of yesterday and today, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Clarence Darrow, Frank Easterbrook, and Antonin Scalia.

If you want to make your writing clearer, more precise, more persuasive, and above all more stylish, The Elements of Legal Style offers the surest--and the most enjoyable--means to that end.

Bryan A. Garner is a best-selling legal author with more than a dozen titles to his credit, including A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, The Winning Brief, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, and Legal Writing in Plain English. He is also the editor in chief of Black's Law Dictionary in all its current editions.