Foreword
The Honorable Thomas M. Reavley
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
In 1984, a young man named Bryan Garner, the grandson of my erstwhile and
esteemed colleague on the Supreme Court of Texas, Justice Meade F. Griffin, joined my
Fifth Circuit chambers as one of my law clerks. I knew he had a scholarly bent, but at
one point he surprised me with a huge file of index cards that he’d been compiling since
his first week of law school—a cache of linguistic jottings that ended up being enshrined
in the book you’re now reading. An interesting hobby, I thought, until the representative of a Boston publisher sought my help to persuade this 25-year-old Mr. Garner to
accept a significant advance payment and allow publication of his book (losing out, I
soon discovered, to Oxford University Press). It then dawned on me that I might have
a remarkable lexicographer in my office.
The years have verified this and have seen his ongoing achievements. I have watched
Bryan closely as he has marched on in a career of prodigious creativity and productivity.
He is the acknowledged authority when it comes to legal language and legal rhetoric.
Since this book on legal usage first appeared in 1987, he has transformed Black’s Law
Dictionary into the most authoritative law dictionary ever published. He has taken
both English usage and (with this book) legal usage to new heights. It is with pride and
gratitude that I can herald another contribution by the legal world’s most eminent writer
and master of language.
Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage not only defines a wealth of terms and expressions
but also offers an abundance of clear, concise directions for their correct and effective
use. Although legal terms here receive special attention, the scope of these directions
on usage remains as broad as the language itself, whether one’s community be that of
American English or British English. The dictionary clearly defines many misused or
confusing words, legal and nonlegal, and contains much useful information on syntax,
pronunciation, and spelling.
Here may be found up-to-date information and practical guidelines on language and
style—including discussions of obstacles and pitfalls in communication—all directed
toward improved legal writing, whether in judicial opinions, briefs, pleadings, or letters.
The entries on generic writing problems, such as split infinitives, fused participles,
misplaced modifiers, and titular tomfoolery, draw copious examples from legal
opinions, briefs, and law-review articles. Garner examines problems peculiar to legal
writing, such as biblical affectation, law reviewese, citation of cases, and the
handling of case references. These discussions are generally entertaining as well as
informative, and many of these topics have never been treated so extensively in a book
on legal-writing style.
Lawyers, law students, and general readers interested in clear expression or convincing argument will all find this to be a valuable resource. What is the best noun corresponding to the verb to recuse? Do you say you confected a pleading? Do you confront
issues before a judge? Do you imply intention from someone’s actions, or, as a judge,
do you imply terms into a contract? Are you fond of using meaningful and hopefully
and mental attitude? Are you prone to employ as to or to prefer conclusional over conclusory? Have you forgone discovery and stated the gravamen of your argument? What
do you understand the meaning of Lochnerize to be? In the judgment of an appellate
court, what are the correct objects of reverse and remand? Should you have questions
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Foreword
or hesitation about the use of these or other expressions in legal writing, the Dictionary
of Legal Usage offers clear-cut and judicious guidance.
Along with explanations of legal meanings of otherwise ordinary English words,
Garner includes law terms that have historically been omitted in the standard
unabridged dictionaries, such as adversarial, conclusory, enjoinable, litigational, pretextual, quashal, recusement, and veniremember. Also recorded are many words having
legal meanings that are neglected in the standard dictionaries, such as duplicitous, imply,
judicial, probate, remote, and supersede.
Garner pinpoints differences between any number of near-synonyms: collateral
estoppel (or issue preclusion) and res judicata; compel and impel; concurrent jurisdiction
and pendent jurisdiction; fictitious, fictive, and fictional; incident to and incidental to;
material and relevant; quantum meruit and quantum valebant, and hundreds of similar
sets of words. Most of us will find entries that renew explanations of terms and expressions learned in law school and long since forgotten. We may likewise encounter distinctions and nuances that are new to us.
Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage helps lay to rest some of the linguistic superstitions that many of us grew up with, such as blanket prohibitions against split infinitives,
against beginning sentences with and or but, against using between with more than two
objects, and so on. Language is rarely if ever governed by absolute proscriptions (see
forbidden words and phrases), and Garner is careful to lead the reader to discriminate and differentiate, rather than to latch on to oversimple formulas that can so easily
displace true thought about what constitutes good writing. Surely one of the missions
of this book is precisely to foster such thought.
The meaning that language carries, and the spirit it arouses, are the product of words
and phrases, comprehensible words and phrases. Excess language misdirects. Ambiguous language confuses. Errors in grammar, in diction, in spelling, as well as in fact
or logic, distract and destroy confidence. No writer can afford to underestimate the
importance of precise, well-placed words. Compiled with the writer’s interests in mind,
Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage is not only an essential reference but also a lively,
personal commentary on legal language as used today.
Preface to the Third Edition
In this new edition, Oxford University Press has given what used to be A Dictionary of
Modern Legal Usage a new name: Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage. With the name
change comes an equally sweeping development of the content.
The idea with this edition was to bring the book into the 21st century with newer
(and more) citations—and to replace all the uncited illustrative quotations with citable
examples. This undertaking alone involved a monumental effort, and the book has benefited from it both by improved copiousness of illustration and by enhanced accuracy
of verbal asssessments.
I have continued to resist the lobbying efforts of certain writers to have citations to
their work removed. (Yes, some have actually tried to pressure Oxford University Press
with letter-writing campaigns.) Why have I done this? I believe that I should remain
dispassionate in citing my evidence. In fact, the indexes at the back of the book have
made it easier than ever to know what writers I have cited, and whether those citations
are favorable or unfavorable. (They’re occasionally neutral.) I persist in believing that
the citations confer scholarly value on the work. And let me point out again, as I do on
page xiii, that I have cited erroneous usages by my beloved grandfather, my great friend
and mentor Charles Alan Wright, and myself. And I have cited my close friend and
coauthor, Justice Scalia, unfavorably. As he might well say, “Get over it!” The purpose
is never to ridicule, but to educate: I feel an obligation to illustrate points with actual
examples, not made-up ones—even though doing so has compounded my own labors.
Dozens of new entries have been added. Two of the most notable appear in the letter I: indemnify (a) and interpretation, modes of. For anyone who wonders how
serious a revision this work is, reading those entries will give you a good indication.
As with all my other books, I am indebted to many people who have contributed
ideas for this one. In addition to those cited on pp. xiv–xv (whose contributions endure),
I am grateful to the following scholars and lawyers:
Nancy Burkoff
Christopher Camardello
Shayla R. Edwards
Alexandra B. Garner
Caroline B. Garner
Karolyne H.C. Garner
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Tiger Jackson
Melissa Lin Jones
Thomas B. Lemann
Morris D. Linton
(the late) Sir Robert Megarry
Brian Melendez
Gary Muldoon
Jeff Newman
Thomas M. Reavley
(the late) William Safire
Antonin Scalia
Ann Taylor Schwing
Eliot Turner
Edward T. Wahl
Peter Walsh
(the late) Charles Alan Wright
Kyu Ho Youm
Dean John Attanasio created the Garner Law Scholars program at the Southern Methodist University School of Law. The GLSers (as they’re known) have helped tremendously in researching, cite-checking, and proofreading. Many thanks to Ann R. Chao,
Levi Dillon, JoAnn Dodson, Kevin R. Grubbs, Angeline Houghtlin, Timothy Martin,
Arrissa K. Meyer, Carrie Nie, Laurie M. Velasco, and Ben A. West.
At Oxford University Press, my editors Casper Grathwohl and Damon Zucca gave
invaluable guidance and support as I decided the direction in which to take this third
edition. And their colleagues in marketing—Jennifer Quigley, Susan Fensten, and
Megan Kennedy—approached the practicalities of publication with enthusiastic verve
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Preface to the Third Edition
and savvy insight. At the printing house, Lachina Publishing Services of Cleveland,
Ohio, both Jeff Lachina and Jennifer Bonnar ensured a high degree of accuracy and
editorial consistency, which are all-too-rare qualities in book publishing today.
My much-trusted colleagues at LawProse, Inc.—Jeff Newman, Tiger Jackson, Shayla
R. Edwards, Becky R. McDaniel, and Eliot Turner (see p. vi)—proved enormously helpful in supplying illustrative quotations, double-checking their accuracy, proofreading
the text, and supplying the indexes at the back of the book. My undergraduate summer
intern, Joshua Fuller, helped track down many original sources.
As always, my copyeditors—first and foremost Karen Magnuson of Portland, Oregon, but also Amy Schneider of Wautoma, Wisconsin, and Emily Pfaff of Carrboro,
North Carolina—saved the book from many an editorial glitch. The absence of error,
being a negative virtue, is often taken for granted by readers. Yet as I’ve mentioned, it is
a rara avis (see latinisms) today because of the exigencies of modern book publishing,
and I am deeply grateful especially to Karen Magnuson for helping me achieve a high
degree of accuracy in all my publications.
This book is dedicated to my wife, Karolyne, whose cheerful enthusiam and contagious smile contributed as much as her thorough knowledge of intellectual-property
law. The late William Safire asked me incredulously, after having lunch with the two of
us, “Where in the world did you find her?” I often ask myself nearly the same question,
but it starts with how. Anyway, it was at a LawProse seminar—always a good place to
be. And I thank my lucky stars.
B.A.G.
Dallas, Texas
January 2011
Preface to the Second Edition
Although there is much new material in this second edition, little need be said by way
of introduction. I therefore confine this space to a word about citations and a listing of
my literary debts.
Readers familiar with the first edition will note that I have added several thousand
new illustrative quotations, with full citations. This represents a significant change in
approach.
When writing the first edition, I omitted citations for four reasons. First, I was following the model of H.W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926), which simply quotes
sentences from anonymous sources. (His earlier work, The King’s English (1906), which
he cowrote with his brother, F.G., named sources such as The Times but gave no detailed
citation.) Second, because the quotations merely reflected what I was reading at the
time, they came predominantly from judicial opinions issued by Texas courts and the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit; having just completed a Fifth Circuit clerkship as I finished the manuscript in 1985, I thought it would not be particularly gracious
of me, in a work of this kind, to cite a disproportionately high percentage of Fifth Circuit
opinions. Third, since I had begun practicing law in Texas, it seemed imprudent to cite
the work of judges before whom I might appear. Finally, the lawyers’ briefs from which
I drew quotations did not lend themselves to citation.
Although I still quote briefs without citing them, other sources are now fully cited.
Why? I now think it helpful to show sources—helpful both legally and lexicographically—so I reject Fowler’s approach. Further, the citations in this second edition represent a breadth that was unattainable for the first edition, so I am satisfied that the
sources from Texas and surrounding states are only slightly overrepresented, if at all.
Finally, I am satisfied that the lexicographic value of citations outweighs the risk of
offending someone who has written something that might offend against the language.
I have tried to be dispassionate in my approach to citations. This means, for example,
that I have unfavorably cited my own work (see bequest, vb.), the work of my grandfather
(see ✳feoff (c)), and the work of my mentor, Charles Alan Wright (see disinterest). Of
course, in Wright’s case, there are dozens of other instances in which I quote him favorably.
One more thing about citations. I collected many of them before 1991, when the
Bluebook began to require first names for authors of books and articles. This caused me
no end of needless work, but there were finally a few elusive citations for which neither
I nor my research assistants—nor, indeed, my allies in law libraries—could fill in the
blanks. In those few instances, I made concessions to the shortness of life and followed
the pre-1991 Bluebook form.
Readers will find that this edition is much enriched with quotations not only from
cases, but also from books and other sources. The shame is that it is not more enriched
than it is, for in January 1991 a small lexicographic catastrophe occurred—an event that
will no doubt bedevil me for as long as I care about lexicography. That month, I arranged
to ship some 40 lawbooks from my office at the University of Texas to the American
office of the Oxford Dictionary Department. These books had been thoroughly marked
up for excerpting thousands of illustrative quotations, and they represented several
years of work. Mysteriously these books—which were to be returned to me for use in
preparing this edition—disappeared. They have never been accounted for. And the work
that went into marking them can probably never be duplicated.
That loss, though, has been greatly outweighed by the tremendous help I have
received from dozens of friends and colleagues. My debts are vast. I must merely list
them as an insolvent debtor might do, in schedule form. Some of these friends have simply
sent me comments and suggestions without my ever having met them face-to-face. Others
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Preface to the Second Edition
I have known for many years, and I merely prevailed upon them to look over several entries
within their areas of expertise; luckily for me, no one ever seemed prevailed upon—in fact,
quite the opposite. They have all helped in splendid ways:
David Anderson
Michèle M. Asprey
Hans W. Baade
J.H. Baker
Griffin B. Bell
John A. Bell
Vicki V. Bonnington
A.W. Bradley
Jeffrey B. Brawner
John Browning
Robert W. Burchfield
Jenny Burg
Beverly Ray Burlingame
Peter Butt
Thomas Cable
Lauren Chadwick
Neil H. Cogan
Charles Dewey Cole Jr.
Kirsten L. Concha
Edward H. Cooper
Daniel R. Coquillette
Sir Brian Cubbon
Robert O. Dawson
A. Darby Dickerson
Lance E. Dickson
Robert Eagleson
Frank H. Easterbrook
Eric B. Easton
David Elliott
Stephen F. Fink
Betty S. Flowers
Alexandra B. Garner
Caroline B. Garner
Gary T. Garner
(the late) Thomas Gibbs Gee
Lord Goff of Chieveley
Erwin N. Griswold
R.J. Grogan, Jr.
Alan Gunn
(the late) Alan M.F. Gunn
David Gunn
Robert W. Hamilton
Trevor C. Hartley
John L. Hauer
Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.
Nathan L. Hecht
Dewey R. Hicks Jr.
William B. Hilgers
Nancy Hoagland
William Terrell Hodges
Peter W. Hogg
Steve Holmes
Tony Honoré
Hadley Huchton
Lynn N. Hughes
Laird Hunter
Stanley Johanson
Robert H. Johnston III
Michael E. Keasler
Robert E. Keeton
William Keffer
Elizabeth S. Kerr
Joseph Kimble
N. Stephan Kinsella
Kenneth S. Klein
Karen Larsen
Douglas Laycock
Clyde Leland
Thomas B. Lemann
Sanford Levinson
David J. Luban
Joseph R. Lundy
Peter G. McCabe
Neil MacCormick
Becky R. McDaniel
Thomas O. McGarity
Lord Mackenzie-Stuart
Joseph McKnight
Nanneska N. Magee
Karen Magnuson
John Mann
Thomas Mayo
Sir Robert E. Megarry
Roy M. Mersky
Ernest Metzger
Richard H. Miller
Fred Misko Jr.
B. Prater Monning
James E. Moore
Frederick Moss
Ron Moss
R. Eric Nielsen
John T. Noonan Jr.
James A. Parker
David Peeples
Kenneth L. Penegar
Richard W. Pogue
Rick Prahl
George C. Pratt
Jonathan Pratter
Jack Ratliff
Alan Rau
Hal R. Ray Jr.
Thomas M. Reavley
Charles Rembar
Christopher Ricks
Kenneth F. Ripple
Marlyn Robinson
Kimberly Rogaliner
C. Paul Rogers III
David W. Schultz
Fred Shapiro
David J. Sharpe
Christopher Simoni
A.W.B. Simpson
Katherine Smith
David Simon Sokolow
Bruce S. Sostek
Joseph F. Spaniol
Martin Stanford
Mark E. Steiner
Alicemarie Stotler
Michael Sturley
Pat Sullivan
Barbara M. Tearle
Linda Thomas
Randall M. Tietjen
Michael Tigar
John R. Trimble
John W. Velz
Richard S. Walinski
David M. Walker
Patricia H. Webb
Russell J. Weintraub
Carla Wheeler
Julie J. White
Sir David G.T. Williams
William R. Wilson Jr.
Sir Harry Woolf
Charles Alan Wright
Custis Wright
Suzanne F. Young
Mark G. Yudof
Preface to the Second Edition xv
If I’ve omitted anyone, as I must have, my apologies.
Perhaps my vastest debts are to David M. Walker, of Glasgow, and Beverly Ray
Burlingame, of Dallas. These fine scholars read the whole of my first draft and gave
detailed comments in the margins. I doubt that there is a page in the book that hasn’t
been improved by their work.
Law librarians have repeatedly come to my aid. I’ve received the most help from Roy
M. Mersky and his staff at the Tarlton Law Library in Austin. David Gunn in particular
has generously run down countless sources for me, with uncommon skill and verve.
Likewise, the Southern Methodist University Law Library has been extremely helpful. I
cannot overstate how important it was to my research when the director, Gail Daly, gave
me two card catalogues for storing lexicographic cards. (That may sound quaint in the
age of computers, but index cards remain indispensable to lexicographers everywhere.)
Finally, Barbara Tearle and R.G. Logan of the Bodleian Law Library, in Oxford, kindly
helped me track down some sources that were otherwise inaccessible. As you might guess,
I have never met a law librarian I didn’t like.
I’m grateful to Dean Paul Rogers of S.M.U. Law School for allocating research-assistant
funds that made it possible for me to have all quotations and citations verified. I don’t
know another dean who would extend this courtesy to a former faculty member, but
S.M.U. is a special place.
I’ve benefited enormously from the teaching I’ve done in continuing legal education,
primarily through LawProse, Inc. From my LawProse colleagues—Betty S. Flowers and
John R. Trimble, both English professors at the University of Texas at Austin—I have
learned a great deal. Many of the new entries show the influence they have had on me:
from Betty I have learned more about the writing process, and from John I have learned
more about effective editing. John has also contributed useful terminology, such as “miscues,” and is largely responsible for my about-face on the subject of contractions.
I’ve also learned from the thousands of lawyers who have participated in LawProse
workshops on legal writing and legal drafting. Through questions and comments, many
of these participants have given me a deeper understanding of specific legal-linguistic
issues.
The members of the H.W. Fowler Society—a loose organization I founded in order to
monitor modern usage—have contributed dozens of examples and ideas for headwords.
Most notably, John W. Velz, a great Shakespearean scholar and professor emeritus of
English at the University of Texas at Austin, has faithfully sent me hundreds of so-called
gleanings. I would not have entries such as the ones on while away and ✳wreckless if it
weren’t for him.
This edition owes much to Claude Conyers and Nancy Hoagland of Oxford University Press. Time and again, Claude approved my requests for extraordinary assistance
of one kind or another. And Nancy is the author’s dream of what a production editor
should be: perfectionist and highly proprietary in her approach to the book, but respectful on those rare occasions when I perversely resisted her improvements.
When DMLU came out in 1987, my daughter Caroline had just been born some
six months earlier. There is a funny photograph of her sitting beside the one-foot-tall
pile of manuscript. Now she is eight, and her sister, Alexandra, is three; meanwhile, the
manuscript pile has doubled in size. As my girls continue to grow, I’m rather hoping
that DMLU has reached its full maturity. But I somehow doubt it.
Preface to the First Edition
In 1921, an article in the American Bar Association Journal called for a book on “writing legal English.”1 The author of that article, Urban A. Lavery, pointed out that lawyers
rarely consult a book on grammar or composition even once to the hundreds of times
they consult lawbooks; and yet, as he observed, when convincing argument is to the
fore, or clearness of expression is desired, the elements of good writing are often more
important than piled-up citations of cases.2 Since Lavery proclaimed this judgment, many
books on “writing legal English” have been published, but none with the broad scope or
easy accessibility that might allow readers to resolve at a glance the many grammatical
and stylistic questions that arise in legal writing. Filling that gap is the goal of this book.
Anglo-American law has a language of its own, consisting in a vocabulary with an
unusually large number of foreign phrases, archaic words and expressions, terms of art,
and argot words. Its formal style reflects the dignity and solemnity with which the profession views its mission. These distinctive qualities of legal language—evident alike in
the speech and the writing of lawyers—are well enough documented. What has remained
uncollected and unscrutinized in any systematic way is the vast body of legal usage.
For a specialist language, the language of law remains remarkably variable, largely
because it has been incompletely recorded and mapped. In this respect it is analogous to
English before 18th-century grammarians attempted to reduce its variability and make
logical its many quiddities. This is not to say, of course, that the language of the law has
the malleable capacity of Elizabethan English, which, in the hands of a creative genius
like Shakespeare, could be supremely expressive and evocative. Quite the opposite. Stare
decisis remains at the core of our system of law—so much so that the continual search
for precedents often discourages legal writers from straying beyond precisely how things
have been said before. As a result, many locutions have become fossilized in legal language over generations. And the inheritors of that language cannot always distinguish
mere form from necessary substance, to the extent that form and substance are ever
separable.
Legal traditionalists may be justified in not wanting to throw over too readily what
has long served well. Yet tradition alone is not sufficient reason for retaining outmoded
forms of language. Modern legal writers must strike a difficult balance in the quest to
simplify legal English. They should not cling perversely to archaic language, which
becomes less comprehensible year by year, for its own sake. Nor should they seek to
jettison every word or phrase that bears the stamp of legal tradition.
As for students of law, they learn the technical language that they will need—the quirks
of legal jargon, the peculiar idiomatic expressions, the grammatical idiosyncrasies, the
neologisms that cannot be found even in the most current unabridged dictionaries—
largely by osmosis. These linguistic matters are, for the most part, seldom discussed by
lawyers or law professors; rather, they are part of the spoken and written legal discourse
that neophyte lawyers absorb every day and learn to use unconsciously. This casualness
in acquiring the language frequently leads to variable and contradictory linguistic habits
that need explicating, codifying, and, in some instances, taming.
Granted these basic facts of legal language—the course of its growth, the challenge of
its use, the pattern of its acquisition—this book aims at serving three primary functions.
First, it helps lawyers chart their way through the bogs of legal language. In the past,
1. Lavery, The Language of the Law, 7 A.B.A. J. 277 (1921).
2. Id. at 280.
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Preface to the First Edition
anyone wanting such a guide has had to make do with general writing manuals. Though
this dictionary lays no claim to comprehensiveness, it offers the legal writer guidance
on hundreds of specific points of usage. The advice it gives is generally on the conservative side of usage and grammar, for the simple reason that lawyers generally write in a
relatively formal context. Lapses from what has come to be accepted as correct irritate
and distract the educated reader, and they make the writing less persuasive. Yet the conservative approach exemplified in these pages aspires to be an informed conservatism,
one that neither battles hopelessly against linguistic faits accomplis nor remains blind
to the inevitable growth and change that occur in language.
Second, the dictionary addresses a great many usage problems that do not ordinarily
arise in the writing of persons untrained in the law, and therefore that are not addressed
in standard writing guides. Certainly it covers territory common to general guides,
as inevitably it must. But one of its chief uses should be in pointing out divergences
between legal and lay usage, many of which have previously gone unrecorded. To this
end, the dictionary serves lawyers and nonlawyers alike, for it can help both groups
bridge the linguistic gulf that separates them, to the degree that is possible. The greater
effort here needs to be made by lawyers, who in recent years have become increasingly
aware of the importance of using legal language that is simple and direct. Indeed, simplicity and directness, two of the touchstones of good writing, are advocated throughout
this dictionary in an effort to tag and to discard legalese and highfalutin jargon.
Third, this work may serve, to some extent, as an instrument of reform. Where lawyers
and judges use terms imprecisely or ambiguously (or, indeed, incorrectly), this dictionary
often presents standards that will enhance rather than destroy valuable nuances. If ever
a prescriptive approach to language is justified, it is in law, where linguistic precision is
often of paramount concern, and where ambiguity and vagueness (except when purposeful) are intolerable. Within its compass, the dictionary thus seeks to preserve the rich
differentiation in our legal vocabulary, to set out some of the important grammatical
usages and traditional idioms, and to oppose slipshod usages that blur well-developed
distinctions. Of course, no work of this kind can be a panacea for the problems that occur
in legal writing. But such a work can realistically seek to make legal writers sensitive to
the aesthetic possibilities of their prose, to goad them into thinking more acutely about
what works in a given context, and what does not.
Modern Legal Usage is arranged so that the legal writer, unsure of or puzzled by a particular word or point of grammar, can consult a specific entry addressing the problem
at hand. Virtually all the sentences quoted to illustrate legal usage, including linguistic
pitfalls, originated in judicial opinions. A few come from statutes, fewer still from lawyers’ briefs and other sources. The authors of the quoted specimens generally remain
anonymous because ordinarily it’s unimportant who made a particular mistake. Attention should be focused on the mistake itself, and how to remedy it. Where stare decisis is
the ruling principle, citations are necessary; in a dictionary of usage they are not, except
of course when documenting usages that are lexicographically noteworthy. Whenever
specimens do receive attribution, the importance of that fact lies in documenting the
source, not in giving context to the quoted matter; hence subsequent histories of cases
cited are not given.
Undertaking to write a dictionary of this kind is a precarious task. For by setting oneself up as an arbiter of usage, one also sets one’s prose before the magnifying glasses of
readers, who are certain to find blemishes of one sort or another. Such was H.W. Fowler’s
Preface to the First Edition
fate in his Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), a work that has served me as both
exemplar and caution. For whatever may be amiss or at fault in this dictionary, I readily
acknowledge full responsibility in advance.
As my manuscript swelled, any number of friends and colleagues looked on with
far more than a polite interest. Several have actively contributed to whatever merit the
final product has. Randall K. Glover of Austin and Kelly Bowers of Seattle called problematical words to my attention almost daily during the year we worked side by side for
Judge Thomas M. Reavley. The judge himself, whose approach to life and law cannot
but inspire, gave me advice and encouragement that emboldened me to persevere.
Several fellow lawyers undertook to read large portions of the manuscript and made
expert comments throughout. My learned friends Dr. Betty S. Flowers, David Radunsky, Michelle D. Monse, Roy J. Grogan Jr., Hal Roberts Ray Jr., Joe W. Pitts III, Alfredo
Estrada, Roger Arnold, Lindsay H. Lew, Kenneth S. Klein, Lisa M. Black, Laura Cale,
Sim Israeloff, and Jeffrey B. Brawner have all left the work sharper than they found
it. I am indebted also to the late John N. Jackson, whose comments reflected years of
thought on the subject of legal-writing style.
The Honorable Robert W. Calvert, formerly Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of
Texas, generously read and marked up a prototypical draft of the work; he kept me on
the reader’s path and gave me a number of useful ideas. I am grateful to Justice Sandra
Day O’Connor for corresponding with me on some of the stylistic practices of the
United States Supreme Court.
Edmund S.C. Weiner, the accomplished Oxford lexicographer, and Martin S. Stanford, an extremely knowledgeable and thoughtful editor in New York, minutely read
the full manuscript and made innumerable improvements. To these two scholars I am
especially beholden, as I am to my father, Dr. Gary T. Garner, who spent many hours
reading galleys.
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