Bryan A. Garner > Quotes

“In jargon nobody ever does anything, feels anything, or causes anything; nobody has an opinion. Opinions are had; causes result in; factors affect. Everything is reduced to vague abstraction. The writer can even abolish himself, for jargon never sounds as though anybody had written it; it seems simply to come about, as from a machine, and it talks mechanically of things that come about, through some indistinct interaction of forces.” —Robert Waddell, “Formal Prose and Jargon,” in Modern Essays on Writing and Style 84, 89 (Paul C. Wermuth ed., 1964).”
― Bryan A. Garner, The Winning Brief: 100 Tips for Persuasive Briefing in Trial and Appellate Courts

“A mathematician once told me that there are really only four numbers in the world: one, two, three, and many.”
― Bryan A. Garner, HBR Guide to Better Business Writing

“DFW:  Isn’t verbosity, the term itself, pejorative? Is this not a loaded question? Verbose is not neutral.   BAG:   Why is it bad to have extra words in a sentence?   DFW:  Doesn’t extra, itself, imply . . . It’s very . . . I don’t think verbosity, in terms of using a lot of words, is always a bad thing artistically. In the kind of writing that we’re talking about, there are probably two big dangers. One is that it makes the reader work harder, and that’s never good. The other is that if the reader becomes conscious that she’s having to work harder because you’re being verbose, now she’s apt not only to dislike the piece of writing; she’s apt to draw certain conclusions about you as a person that are unfavorable. So you run the risk of losing kind of both your logical appeal and your ethical appeal.”
― Bryan A. Garner, Quack This Way

“though it’s dreadfully ugly to the ear and why if you think hard about it, “Keep your personal belongings in visual contact at all times” is actually likely to be understood by a smaller percentage of people than, “Please keep an eye on your stuff at all times.”   Nevertheless, there are imperatives behind using the language that way. And some of it is to be antihuman.”
― Bryan Garner, Quack This Way

“There’s a Poe thing, right? “One out of one hundred things is discussed at great length because it really is obscure. Ninety-nine out of one hundred things are obscure because they’re discussed at more length than they need to be.”
― Bryan Garner, Quack This Way

“19. Judicial Opinions. In disposing of controverted cases, a judge should indicate the reasons for his action in an opinion showing that he has not disregarded or overlooked serious arguments of counsel. He thus shows his full understanding of the case, avoids the suspicion of arbitrary conclusion, promotes confidence in his intellectual integrity and may contribute useful precedent to the growth of the law. It is desirable that Courts of Appeals in reversing cases and granting new trials should so indicate their views on questions of law argued before them and necessarily arising in the controversy that upon the new trial counsel may be aided to avoid the repetition of erroneous positions of law and shall not be left in doubt by the failure of the court to decide such questions.”
― Bryan A. Garner, Black's Law Dictionary

“mostly unsuccessful attempts to teach grade-school children English using transformational grammar were made during the 1960s and early 1970s. Today it is taught mostly in colleges and graduate schools. Outside linguistics, transformational grammar is used mostly in computer-language-processing applications. It has an alien look and feel to traditionalists, but it can convey interesting insights into how the language works”
― Bryan A. Garner, The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation

“you’ll have to be willing to embrace simplicity—while always resisting oversimplification.”
― Bryan A. Garner, Legal Writing in Plain English: A Text with Exercises

“That’s why people use terms like flow or effortless to describe writing that they regard as really superb. They’re not saying effortless in terms of it didn’t seem like the writer spent any work. It simply requires no effort to read it—the same way listening to an incredible storyteller talk out loud requires no effort to pay attention. Whereas when you’re bored, you’re conscious of how much effort is required to pay attention. Does that make sense?”
― Bryan Garner, Quack This Way

“Let me stop you. I don’t remember your entry on buried verbs. Is that what’s wrong?   BAG:   Yeah, I think they’re unduly abstract.   DFW:  But sometimes, obviously, if you’re referring to litigation, you’ve got to use the buried verb.   BAG:   Right, you can’t always say litigate.   DFW:  Then there’s always the—what do you call it?—buried nouns, like, “We need to dialogue about this,” “You gifted me with this,” which make my stomach hurt even more than the buried verbs. I guess those, a lot of those are more vogue words.   BAG:   Linguists call it functional shift, where you press a noun into service as a verb. Some kinds of functional shift are not so bothersome—using a noun as an adjective, “We’ve got a room problem here,” you know, that kind of thing.   DFW:  But you’re right, yeah, the noun-to-verb thing is more annoying in a vogue-word sense. But you’re right. Buried verbs are a quick way to turn a clean, elegant, simple clause into a clotted nightmare.”
― Bryan Garner, Quack This Way

“DFW:  One answer is the fact that people, unless they’re paying attention, tend to confuse fanciness with intelligence or authority. For me, I’ve noodled about this a fair amount because a lot of this sort of language afflicts me. My guess is this: officialese, as spoken by officials, is meant to empty the communication of a certain level of humanity. On purpose.   If I’m delivering a press release as an official, I’m speaking not as David Wallace. I’m speaking as the deputy assistant commissioner in charge of whatever. I’m speaking with and for some sort of bureaucratic entity. My guess is one of the reasons why we as a people tolerate, or even expect, this officialese is that we associate it with a different form of communication than interpersonal—Dave and Bryan talking together. That the people who are speaking are in many senses speaking not as human beings but as the larynx and tongue of a larger set of people, responsibilities, laws, regulations, whatever. And that is probably why, even”
― Bryan Garner, Quack This Way

“documents—a luxury that earlier lexicographers never enjoyed.”
― Bryan A. Garner, Garner's Modern American Usage

“Let me stop you. I don’t remember your entry on buried verbs. Is that what’s wrong?   BAG:   Yeah, I think they’re unduly abstract.   DFW:  But sometimes, obviously, if you’re referring to litigation, you’ve got to use the buried verb.   BAG:   Right, you can’t always say litigate.   DFW:  Then there’s always the—what do you call it?—buried nouns, like, “We need to dialogue about this,” “You gifted me with this,” which make my stomach hurt even more than the buried verbs. I guess those, a lot of those are more vogue words.   BAG:   Linguists call it functional shift, where you press a noun into service as a verb. Some kinds of functional shift are not so bothersome—using a noun as an adjective, “We’ve got a room problem here,” you know, that kind of thing.”
― Bryan Garner, Quack This Way

“using nimrod in the Bugs Bunny sense.”
― Bryan A. Garner, Garner's Modern English Usage

“All it takes is a few words to make a strong impression, good or bad.”
― Bryan A. Garner, HBR Guide to Better Business Writing

“Not until 1761 did any grammarian settle on the eight that became the canonical parts of speech in English. He was the same man who discovered oxygen: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). In his Rudiments of English Grammar, he listed these: • noun • adjective • pronoun • verb • adverb • preposition • conjunction • interjection15”
― Bryan A. Garner, The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation