Garner's Modern English Usage (GMEU), written by Bryan A. Garner and published by Oxford University Press, is a usage dictionary and style guide (or 'prescriptive dictionary') for contemporary Modern English.[1][pages needed] It was first published in 1998 as A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, with a focus on American English, which it retained for the next two editions as Garner's Modern American Usage (GMAU). It was expanded to cover English more broadly in the 2016 fourth edition, under the present title. The work covers issues of usage, pronunciation, and style, from distinctions among commonly confused words and phrases to notes on how to prevent verbosity and obscurity. In addition, it contains essays about the English language. An abridged version of the first edition was also published as The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style in 2000.
Novelist David Foster Wallace said, "The fact of the matter is that Garner's dictionary is extremely good .... Its format ... includes entries on individual words and phrases and expostulative small-cap .mw-parser-output span.smallcapsfont-variant:small-caps.mw-parser-output span.smallcaps-smallerfont-size:85%mini-essays."[3] (An unabridged, much lengthier version of Wallace's essay, "Authority and American Usage", appeared in a 2005 anthology of essays entitled Consider the Lobster.) He commended Garner's stance on the linguistic descriptivism versus prescriptivism issue that lexicographers (dictionary writers) face. Garner's dictionary is prescriptive in aiming to uphold good English usage, but also concedes to variant forms and usage errors that are so widespread that there is no lexicographical hope of changing them.
A Dictionary Of Modern Legal Usage
Michael Quinion of WorldWideWords.org said in his review[2] that usage guides "row a course against the current of modern lexicography and linguistics", which are descriptive fields that often fail to "meet the day-to-day needs of those users of English who want to speak and write in a way that is acceptable to educated opinion." Quinion opined that Garner lays down rules without falling victim to "worn-out shibboleths or language superstitions".
This new edition of Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage (previously A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage) marshals and analyses the modern legal vocabulary more thoroughly than any other contemporary reference work can claim to do.
Since the first edition, Bryan A. Garner has drawn on his unrivalled experience as a legal editor to refine his positions on legal usage and to add a wealth of new material. The new Third Edition remains indispensable by:-updating numerous entries, adding dozens of new entries and hundreds of new sections within existing entries; adding hundreds of new illustrative quotations from judicial opinions and leading law books by prominent legal commentators; revising the selected bibliography; and expanding and updating cross-references to guide readers quickly and easily. A new preface introduces the reader to this edition and discusses content that has been newly incorporated.Influential writers and editors rely on GDLU daily. It is an essential resource for practising lawyers, scholars of the law, and libraries of all sizes and types. GDLU functions both as a style guide and as a law dictionary, guiding writers to distinguish between true terms of law and mere jargon and illustrating recommended forms of expression.
1891, 1st ed.: A dictionary of law: containing definitions of the terms and phrases of American and English jurisprudence, ancient and modern; including the principal terms of international, constitutional, and commercial law; with a collection of legal maxims and numerous select titles from the civil law and other foreign systems. Henry Campbell Black.Via Internet Archive, HathiTrust.
1910, 2nd ed.: A law dictionary containing definitions of the terms and phrases of American and English jurisprudence, ancient and modern: and including the principal terms of international, constitutional, ecclesiastical, and commercial law, and medical jurisprudence, with a collection of legal maxims, numerous select titles from the Roman, modern civil, Scotch, French, Spanish, and Mexican law, and other foreign systems, and a table of abbreviations. Henry Campbell Black.Via Internet Archive, Internet Archive, Internet Archive.
While an orientation towards formal equivalence is the prevailing norm in legal translation, the above example raises questions of whether such an approach should override considerations of natural fluency in the target language. While legal translators obviously need to exercise caution in considering more dynamically equivalent options, we need to be equally mindful of contemporary norms of English legal usage, which advocate the elimination of the kind of excess verbiage that is still a characteristic feature of many Spanish legal texts. 2ff7e9595c
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