The Elements of Legal Style

I bought this book in 1994 or so, and try to read it every year as a refresher course. You can read the entire book (skimming the examples) in a long weekend. Doing that will immessurably improve the coherence and power of your writing. This book has helped me. The examples are clear and relevant and relatively easy to use in your own writing.Garner has a real gift and this early book was just the first sign of his abilities. Enjoy!

Perhaps because Garner's major work, "A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage," has received so much attention, this little book is often overlooked. This is unfortunate because "The Elements of Legal Style" is an outstanding resource and it is probably more accessible and more useful to the working lawyer than "A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage." As Professor Wright indicates in his incisive Forward, "anyone, no matter how good a writer, will find much that is useful in the book." This book should be in the library of every lawyer and judge. Highly recommended.

As a great admirer of Prof. Garner's other works, I was very disappointed by this volume. It provides little advice that cannot be found, in equally brief form, in any number of "general" writing guides already on the market. I believe lawyers and law students would be better served by buying, first, Garner's *Modern Legal Usage* (a true masterpiece) and reading the essays on general stylistic topics in that excellent volume. If one has additional money and time, Garner's "Winning Brief" would be a wise second purchase. [Note: This review, originally written several years ago, was of the first edition of Prof. Garner's *Elements.* The second edition appears to be much improved over the first.]

This reference guide is a good review of English mechanics in general. It has a certain snobbish overtone, sometimes. I recommend it, however.