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RR 2012/059 Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage (3rd edition) Edited Bryan A. Gamer Oxford University Press Oxford 2011 ISBN 978 0 19 538420 8 xxx + 991 pp. £49.99/$65
Keywords Dictionaries, Language, Legal profession
Review DOI 10.1108/09504121211205043
"In 1984, a young man named Brian Garner . . . joined my chambers as one of my law clerks [. . .] [and] at one point he surprised me with a huge file of index cards [. . .] a cache of linguistic jottings that ended up being enshrined in the book you are now reading" (Foreword by Thomas M. Reavley). This book is the third edition of what was formerly A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, first published in 1987 and revised in 1995. That "huge file of index cards" is now a large-format book of over 1,000 pages. It is not a legal dictionary per se, although some definitions are noted, but more a guide to the correct use of legal words and phrases and thus, hopefully, to greater clarity of written expression. "If there is a malady endemic in legal writing, it is the habit of mechanically repeating old wads of verbiage that reflect neither true reasoning nor feeling. Many legal opinions and law-review articles teem with ready-made legal phrases strung end to end [. . .] and so endemic are such phrases as case of first impression, it is well established that, and notwithstanding anything to the contrary that they numb the intellect of both reader and writer" (entry for Psittacism: the parrotlike use of language). More examples are given in the entry for Clichés, and in the entry for Plain Language the author gives an example of a 260-word tangle of verbiage which he reduces...