The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (2d Ed.) [Spiral-bound]

Bryan A. Garner (Author), Jeff Newman (Author), Tiger Jackson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 18, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0314168915 | ISBN-13: 978-0314168917 | Edition: 2nd Sprl

Provides a comprehensive guide to the essential rules of legal writing. Unlike most style or grammar guides, it focuses on the special needs of legal writers. answering a wide spectrum of questions about grammar and style both rules as well as exceptions. Also gives detailed, authoritative advice on punctuation, capitalization, spelling, footnotes, and citations, with illustrations in legal context. Designed for law students, law professors, practicing lawyers and judges, the work emphasizes the ways in which legal writing differs from other styles of technical writing. Its how to sections deal with editing and proofreading, numbers and symbols, and overall document design.

Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 510 pages
• Publisher: West; 2nd Sprl edition (July 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0314168915
• ISBN-13: 978-0314168917
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #16 in Books > Law > Legal Education > Legal Writing
  • #33 in Books > Law > Law Practice

More About the Author

Bryan Garner is the award-winning author or editor of more than 20 books. He is a prolific lecturer, having taught more than 2,500 writing workshops since the 1991 founding of his company, LawProse, Inc. His works include Garner on Language and Writing and Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, co-written with Justice Antonin Scalia. Garner has served as editor-in-chief of Black's Law Dictionary since 1995, and he is the author of the grammar-and-usage chapter in the venerable Chicago Manual of Style.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars (Almost) everything you should have wanted to know about legal writing, but didn't ask September 13, 2007

By Timothy B. Mustaine

Format:Spiral-bound

This is a wonderful reference work on legal style--comprehensive, authoritative, well organized, and genuinely readable. It covers an incredible range of topics: punctuation, page layout, typography, spelling, grammar, usage, and more. It makes specific stylistic recommendations for many different types of legal documents, including business correspondence, research memos, pleadings, appellate briefs, and judicial opinions, to name just a few. And it's useful for anybody who has anything to do with creating legal documents, from judges and senior lawyers, to raw associates and law students, to legal secretaries; it would even be helpful to pro se litigants (as other reviewers have noted). I really wish that Amazon provided a "look inside" that showed the table of contents - the book covers an amazing amount of ground.

It's too bad that practitioners used to obfuscatory legalese, or who needlessly produce ugly, poorly written, unreadable documents, won't ever buy, much less read, this book. There's a lot of lousy legal writing churned out every day--bad not just in the sense that a writing teacher or design and typography professional wouldn't like it, but bad in the sense of being hard to read and understand and therefore, in the end, unpersuasive. This book is an antidote.

I recommend all of Bryan Garner's books, but this is the one to start with--it's the most general, and the most broadly useful. (If you write briefs, as I do, the second one to get is The Winning Brief). Every once in a while I would quibble with one of the rules Garner espouses, but for every such rule this book must have ten others that have taught me that, much to my chagrin, I (and almost every other lawyer I know) have been doing something wrong, without realizing it, for many years. I wish I'd discovered Garner much earlier; he's really helped me improve my writing and the way my documents look. Law offices ought to make The Redbook standard issue. That's not going to happen, sad to say, but I can't think of a better, more useful book to give to new lawyers about to start their first legal jobs. Or to senior lawyers who recognize that they don't know everything there is to know about legal writing.

One downside to this book is that, because it is so comprehensive, it sometimes will seem a little too basic. If you're really a good legal writer you may want to start with one of Garner's more "advanced" books. But you'd be amazed at how many legal writers seem not to have learned what is taught in high school English classes. <g> And in any case, this book covers much important stuff that just isn't taught in law school, much less high school, and that most legal writers don't manage to pick up along the way.

Highly recommended.

54 of 63 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars When you have to be right, this is the book. April 30, 2002

By Wayne Schiess

Format:Spiral-bound

Do you edit your documents based on vaguely-recalled rules from junior high? Do you turn to a colleague when you have a question about grammar, punctuation, usage, or style? Do you rely on old forms to prepare professional documents? Stop it. The answers are here; the source is the Redbook. It's the ultimate guide to writing correctly. Every lawyer should get it and use it.

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be on all attorneys' book shelves March 5, 2005

By R. Alembik

Format:Spiral-bound|Amazon Verified Purchase

As a grammarian and etymologist by avocation, my tastes are a bit weird. Maybe that's why I actually enjoyed reading this book casually. Each of Garner's books belongs on the bookshelf of any attorney who considers himself a professional. My pet peeve is the attorney who I know is writing to impress the reader with his writing skills as opposed to the attorney who is writing to persuade the reader as to a particular position. The former will not have Garner's books in his library.