The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style

by Garner, Bryan A.; Newman, Jeff; Jackson, Tiger

• ISBN13: 9780314258595
• ISBN10: 0314258590
• Edition: Spiral
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-03-01
• Publisher: West Group

Summary

An indispensable aid for anyone who prepares legal documents ? including law students, law professors, practicing lawyers, and judges ? Garner's The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style provides the comprehensive guide to the essential rules of legal writing. It gives detailed, authoritative advice on grammar, style, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, footnotes, and citations, with illustrations in legal contexts. The Redbook focuses on the special needs of legal writers, emphasizing the ways in which legal writing differs from other styles of technical writing. Its how-to sections cover editing and proofreading, numbers and symbols, overall document design, and more. The Redbook also gives tips on preparing briefs and other court documents, opinion letters, demand letters, research memos, and contracts. It explains the correct usage of and provides everyday English translations for more than 1,000 words that are often troublesome to legal writers, 200 terms of art that take on new meanings in legal contexts, 800 words with required prepositions in certain contexts, and 500 stuffy phrases and needless legalisms.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Mechanics	1	(120)
Punctuation	3	(42)
Commas	3	(7)
Semicolons	10	(3)
Colons	13	(4)
Quotation Marks	17	(4)
Parentheses	21	(4)
Brackets	25	(2)
Ellipsis Dots	27	(3)
Em Dashes	30	(2)
En Dashes	32	(1)
Hyphens	33	(3)
Periods	36	(3)
Question Marks	39	(1)
Exclamation Marks	40	(1)
Apostrophes	41	(2)
Slashes	43	(1)
Bullets	44	(1)
Capitalization	45	(14)
Italics, Boldface, and Underlining	59	(6)
Document Design	65	(10)
Typeface	65	(2)
White Space	67	(2)
Justification	69	(1)
Horizontal Spacing	70	(2)
Vertical Spacing	72	(1)
Headings	73	(2)
Numbers	75	(8)
Typographic Symbols	83	(4)
Spelling	87	(18)
General Principles	87	(3)
Plurals	90	(3)
Possessives	93	(2)
Compounds	95	(4)
American vs. British Spelling	99	(2)
Common Misspellings	101	(4)
Citations	105	(12)
Footnotes	117	(4)
Part 2: Grammar and Usage	121	(162)
Grammar	123	(34)
Nouns	123	(4)
Pronouns	127	(10)
Verbs	137	(10)
Adjectives	147	(3)
Adverbs	150	(2)
Prepositions	152	(2)
Conjunctions	154	(2)
Interjections	156	(1)
Stuffy Words and Legalese	157	(24)
Pompous Style	157	(7)
Terms of Art	164	(17)
Troublesome Words	181	(98)
Usage Problems in Legal Writing	181	(63)
Idiomatic Prepositions	244	(28)
Offensive Language	272	(7)
Editing and Proofreading	279	(4)
Part 3: Preparing Legal Documents	283	(88)
Research Memos	285	(12)
Two model research memos	288	(9)
Opinion Letters	297	(8)
A model opinion letter	301	(4)
Demand Letters	305	(6)
Two model demand letters	308	(3)
Pleadings	311	(8)
A model complaint and answer	315	(4)
Motions	319	(12)
A model motion	322	(9)
Appellate Briefs	331	(30)
A model appellate brief	335	(26)
Contracts	361	(10)
A model contract	365	(6)
Word Index	371	(20)
General Index	391