Bryan A. Garner

LawProse Lesson #206: Statutory and Contractual Interpretation.

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
What important skill is most generally lacking among law-school graduates? Almost certainly this: the ability to develop, hone, and deliver arguments about the interpretation of contracts and statutes. Lawyers often spend months working on text-based cases without realizing that their best argument is the ordinary-meaning canon, the negative-implication canon, the last-antecedent canon, the surplusage canon, …

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LawProse Lesson #205: Lay, v.t. vs. lie, v.i.

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
Lay, v.t. vs. lie, v.i. These two short verbs can cause tall trouble. Let’s lay down some helpful guidelines so we won’t be accused of lying down on the job. Lay means “to put down, place, or arrange.” It’s always transitive—it needs a direct object {Please lay the purchase contract on Stan’s desk.}. Lie means “to recline, be …

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LawProse Lesson #204: “Lay of the land” or “lie of the land”?

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
Lay of the land or lie of the land? Literally, the phrase means “the arrangement of an area’s terrain; topography.” Figuratively, it refers to “the facts of a given situation; the current state of affairs.” The phrase is an Americanism dating from the late 18th century. From the beginning, it’s been lay of the land—although as …

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Miscellaneous Entries.

Bryan A. Garner / By
Miscellaneous Entries. libido. Although dictionaries once recorded /li-BIY-doh/ as the preferred pronunciation, /li-BEE-doh/ is now the established preference in American English. licorice (/LiK-uh-rish/) is the standard spelling. “Liquorice” is a variant form. This word shouldn’t be confused with its uncommon homophones, “lickerish” (= lascivious, lecherous) and “liquorish” (= tasting like liquor). lie/lay/lain. So inflected (except …

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LawProse Lesson #203: “Lie low” or “lay low”?

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
Lie low or lay low?      Both phrases could be correct—it depends on the tense you are using. Use lie low in the present tense; lay low in the past tense. Ex.: The celebrity is lying low for a few weeks to avoid news reporters. Ex.: Last month, that same celebrity lay low to avoid the paparazzi. Ex.: He has …

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LawProse Lesson #202: Parenthetical plurals.

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
Should you use “(s)” to indicate that a noun could be either singular or plural? Competent drafters should avoid creating parenthetical plurals and craft better ways to express a thought. A parenthetical plural is formed when an “(s)” is added to the end of a singular noun to indicate that the statement may apply to …

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LawProse Lesson #201: “Subpoena” vs. “subpena”

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
Why do so many federal statutes use the spelling subpena instead of subpoena?      Funny thing. It seems to be the result of an old choice made for the Government Printing Office Style Manual. The earliest copy we have at LawProse, the 1926 edition, has no reference to the spelling of this word. But the …

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LawProse Lesson #200: Which is standard: “toward” or “towards”?

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
Which is standard: toward or towards?       In American English, toward has been the usual form in print sources since about 1900. Many usage authorities since then have expressed a strong preference for toward, without the final –s. The s-less form of the word is consistent with analogous (though less common) directional words …

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: literally.

Bryan A. Garner / By
literally. “Literally” = (1) with truth to the letter; or (2) exactly; according to the strict sense of the word or words. “Literally” in the sense “truly, completely” is a slipshod extension — e.g.: “Behavioralists and postbehavioralists alike, literally or figuratively, learn what they know of science from the natural sciences, from the outside.” (Read: …

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: lip-sync, vb.; lip-synch.

Bryan A. Garner / By
lip-sync, vb.; lip-synch. To lip-sync, of course, is to move one’s lips silently in synchronization with recorded vocals, whether one’s own or someone else’s. Although the dictionaries are split between the “sync” and “synch” forms, the incontestable leader in print is “lip-sync” by a 2-to-1 ratio. But the agent noun is “lip-syncer,” pronounced anomalously with …

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LawProse Lesson #198: Commas with coordinating conjunctions.

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
Commas with coordinating conjunctions. Many writers struggle with whether to use a comma in a compound sentence whose clauses are joined by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, yet, so). Although some examples may be tricky or complicated, most of the time some basic rules apply. Here’s a refresher on the fundamentals: 1. …

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Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Miscellaneous Entries.

Bryan A. Garner / By
Miscellaneous Entries. know, through careless error, is sometimes written “now” — e.g.: “Gempler said he didn’t now [read ‘know’] why the union produced the report.” Hannelore Sudermann, “Teamsters Attack Apple Industry Over Core Issues,” Spokesman-Rev. (Spokane), 23 July 1997, at A10. knowledgeable. So spelled – not ‘knowledgable.’ known /nohn/ is often mispronounced /NOH-uhn/, as if …

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LawProse Lesson #197: Using ellipsis dots with quotations.

Bryan A. Garner, LawProse Lessons / By
Using ellipsis dots with quotations. Lawyers frequently need ellipsis dots because of the abundant quotations in legal writing—quotations that often need trimming. Properly used, ellipses are perfectly respectable and often necessary to avoid both the reproduction of extraneous words (a time-waster) and any suspicion that the writer has tampered with the quotation’s meaning (a credibility-waster). …

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