Bryan Garner on Words
Right Writing: Can you pass this grammar test?
Bryan A. Garner. (Photo by Winn Fuqua Photography)
The mechanical fixes that copy editors make aren’t just matters of opinion: They’re clear-cut matters of right and wrong involving blunders in grammar, punctuation and word choice. They’re different from stylistic edits such as changing prior to to before, or cause of action to claim. They involve the mechanics of sentence construction. What many legal writers don’t realize is that these mechanical errors are readily identifiable to the skilled eye—that is, no competent copy editor would let them pass.
To test your copy editing knowledge, I’ve collected 15 passages that have two mechanical errors apiece. So of the four possible answers for each passage, two are correct answers (the mechanical bungles); two are complete red herrings, as anybody could verify by consulting either The Chicago Manual of Style or The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style.
Try your hand. Warning, though: You’ll need a quiet place where you can concentrate. Remember: Each sentence has two correct answers and two others that are quite wrong.
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How was that? Perhaps you feel as if you just edited a colleague’s work. Let’s hope you made good edits.
Since founding LawProse Inc. in 1990, Bryan A. Garner has trained more than 265,000 lawyers and judges in advocacy and legal drafting. He is the chief editor of Black’s Law Dictionary and author of The Winning Brief, Legal Writing in Plain English and The Elements of Legal Style.
This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.
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