David Foster Wallace was at the center of late-20th-century American literature, Bryan A. Garner at that of legal scholarship and lexicography. It was language that drew them together. The wide-ranging interview reproduced here memorializes 67 minutes of their second and final evening together, in February 2006. It was DFW's last long interview, and the only one devoted exclusively to language and writing.

It its first two editions The Winning Brief explained the art of effective writing in 100 concise, practical, and easy-to-use tips, proving that the key to writing well is to understand the judicial readership. This third edition of Bryan A. Garner's modern classic delivers the same invaluable guidelines with even more supporting evidence. Covering everything from the rules for planning and organizing a brief to openers that can capture a judge's attention from the first few words, these tips add up to the most compelling, orderly, and visually appealing brief that an advocate can present. In Garner's view, good writing is good thinking put to paper. "Never write a sentence that you couldn't easily speak," he warns - and demonstrates how to do just that. Every tip begins with a set of quotable quotes from experts, followed by Garner's masterly advice on building sound paragraphs, drafting crisp sentences, choosing the best words ("Strike pursuant to from your vocabulary."), quoting authority, citing sources, and designing a document that looks as impressive as it reads. Throughout, Garner shows how to edit for maximal impact, using vivid before-and-after examples that apply the basics of rhetoric to persuasive writing. In this much-expanded third edition, Garner has perfected the text with nine new tips, hundreds of new examples, and amplified explanations throughout-all in his trademark style. Among the new sections are tips on understanding judges' reading habits, answering opponents' arguments, writing effective reply briefs, using authorities persuasively, and organizing arguments based on statutes and contracts. Quotable quotes, which Garner carefully assembled after years of wide reading and close study, have been expanded and improved throughout the book. There is also a new appendix on a remarkable brief that some consider the best ever written ("a beautiful marriage of rhetorical skill, thorough research, and humane lawyering"). Perhaps the biggest change to this edition is that every tip now ends with a summary checklist that recaps and crystalizes the subpoints just covered, with further ideas for improvement. Garner conceived these checklists in part as a way to help readers approach his book as a set of 100 tutorials. Reviewing and practicing each tip will offer brief-writers a degree of mastery that more cavalier colleagues will find difficult to equal. An invaluable resource for attorneys, law clerks, judges, paralegals, law students and their teachers, The Winning Brief has the qualities that make all of Garner's books so popular: authority, accessibility, and page after page of techniques that work. If you're writing to win a case, this book shouldn't merely be on your shelf-it should be open on your desk.

This new edition of Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage discusses and analyzes modern legal vocabulary and style more thoroughly than any other contemporary reference work. Since the first edition, Bryan A. Garner has drawn on his unrivaled experience as a legal editor to refine his position on legal usage. The new Third Edition remains indispensable: Garner has updated entries throughout, while adding eight hundred new entries and new senses of existing entries, as well as thousands of new illustrative quotations from judicial opinions and leading lawbooks. Garner has also revised the selected bibliography, and expanded and updated cross-references to guide readers quickly and easily.
The GDLU now has much greater depth in particular areas of law, such as immigration and intellectual property. More examples from British English sources are included, to illustrate the similarities and differences between American and British English, and to aid readers using foreign common-law sources. Dozens of sets of near-synonyms that have long perplexed lawyers are now concisely defined and differentiated. Asterisks now precede words and phrases that are invariably inferior forms, making it easy for readers to tell which ones to avoid. A new category called Interpretation, Modes of, outlines the theories and defines the terminology of interpretation, also known as hermeneutics. Entries contain the most comprehensive glossary available for words and phrases related to legal interpretation. And, for the first time ever, sources are consistently cited throughout, with a solid majority of citations from post-2000. A new preface introduces the reader to this edition and discusses the extensive content that has been newly incorporated.
Influential writers and editors rely on Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage daily. It is an essential resource for practicing lawyers, legal scholars, and libraries of all sizes and types, functioning as both a style guide and a law dictionary, guiding writers to distinguish between true terms of law and mere jargon and illustrating recommended forms of expression. Common blunders are discussed in ways that will discourage writers from any further use. The origins of frequently used expressions are described with engaging prose. Collectively, there is no better resource for approaching legal writing in a logical, clear, and error-free way.