The Elements of Legal Style

by Garner, Bryan A.

Edition: 2nd

ISBN13: 9780195141627

ISBN10: 0195141628

Format: Hardcover

Pub. Date: 2002-03-21

Publisher(s): Oxford University Press

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Summary

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 ofStyle, 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. Garneralso 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.

Author Biography

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.

Acknowledgments

xiii

Foreword

The Letters of the Law

(14)

Fundamental Rules of Usage

(38)

Punctuation

(1)

Always use the serial comma

(1)

Set off a dependent introductory phrase with a comma

(1)

Put a comma between two adjectives that modify a noun similarly

(1)

Put a comma before the second clause in a compound sentence

(1)

Avoid using a comma to combine two sentences into one

(2)

Form singular possessives by adding's to the singular form of the noun

(1)

Form a plural possessive by adding an apostrophe to the plural form of the noun:-s'

(1)

Use a semicolon to separate sentence parts calling for a stronger break than a comma

(2)

Set off incidental comments with paired marks of punctuation

(1)

Hyphenate phrasal adjectives

(2)

Otherwise, be stingy with hyphens

(2)

Slash out virgules (/)

(2)

Word Choice

(1)

Strike out and replace fancy words

(1)

Challenge vague words

(1)

Shun vogue words

(1)

Eschew euphemisms

(2)

Toss out timid phrases

(1)

Discard empty dogmatisms

(1)

Be cautious about using neologisms

(1)

Tune the levels of usage with a fine ear

(3)

Grammar and Syntax

(1)

Use the active voice

(1)

Put pronouns in their proper case and number

(3)

Make the verb agree in number with its subject

(1)

Anchor modifiers to what they modify

(3)

Split infinitives warily, if at all

(1)

Don't be afraid to begin a sentence with And or But

(1)

End sentences with prepositions when you need to

(1)

Use conditional sentences instead of provisos

(2)

Fundamental Principles of Legal Writing

(22)

Brevity and Clarity

(4)

Simplicity of Structure

(1)

Organizing Arguments

(4)

Constructing Paragraphs

(4)

Constructing Sentences

(9)

Some Matters of Form

(24)

Titles

(2)

Headings

(1)

Italics

(1)

Numbers

(1)

Defined Terms

(1)

Contractions

(1)

First Person

(1)

Enumerations

(1)

Quotations

(2)

Alterations and Ellipses

(3)

Citations

(3)

Footnotes

(2)

Forms of Address and Reference

(3)

Signing Off

(2)

Words and Expressions Confused and Misused

(50)

Rhetorical Figures in Law

149

(28)

Comparison

150

(1)

Metaphor

150

(1)

Personification

151

(2)

Simile

153

(1)

Wordplay

154

(1)

Hyperbole

154

(1)

Irony

155

(2)

Meiosis

157

(1)

Paronomasia

157

(3)

Syntactic Arrangement

160

(1)

Anastrophe

160

(1)

Antithesis

160

(2)

Asyndeton

162

(1)

Climax

162

(1)

Parallelism

163

(1)

Periodic Sentence

164

(2)

Rhetorical Question

166

(2)

Repetition

168

(1)

Alliteration

168

(1)

Anadiplosis

168

(1)

Anaphora

169

(1)

Antanaclasis

170

(1)

Chiasmus

171

(1)

Epanalepsis

172

(1)

Epistrophe

173

(1)

Epizeuxis

173

(1)

Pleonasm

174

(1)

Polysyndeton

174

(3)

Conclusion

176

(1)

An Approach to Legal Style

177

(44)

Being Yourself

177

(1)

Develop your own plain voice

177

(1)

When appropriate, invest your writing with some honest feeling

178

(1)

Establish your tone and stick to it

179

(2)

Exposition and Argument

181

(1)

Assume an audience of well-informed generalists

181

(2)

Sharpen your reasoning by summarizing your analysis up front, with just the amount of particularity that a generalist would need

183

(5)

Take pains to be thorough, and then distill the essence. Get to the point

188

(3)

Speaking Legally

191

(1)

Avoid jargon and beware terms of art

191

(2)

Write in English

193

(2)

Instead of using doublets or triplets, use a single word

195

(2)

Understate rather than overstate

197

(1)

Expressive Tactics

198

(1)

Put the action into verbs, not nouns and adjectives

198

(2)

Stress nouns and verbs, not qualifiers

200

(1)

Mind the cadence of your prose

201

(2)

Use cliches with caution. And avoid purple prose

203

(4)

Root out sexist language

207

(6)

Forgo commenting on your words

213

(1)

Ban omnibus words

214

(1)

Use one word for one notion

215

(2)

Ferret out ambiguities

217

(1)

Revise, revise, revise

218

(3)

A Parting Word

221

(2)

Appendix Eighty Classic Statements About Style

223

(18)

Index

241

The Elements of Legal Style

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