Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?
I have a couple of dictionaries, and I think I have a thesaurus around here somewhere. I very rarely use those. If I need to look up a word I'm more likely to use dictionary.com or something. I do have a Black's Law Dictionary, which I do use because legal terms do need to be more specific. I have a Bluebook for citations, of course, and two versions of the ALWD citation book (Association of Legal Writing Directors) which is trying to replace the Bluebook. I hate both of them. I had to use the ALWD for my legal writing class, and then had to switch to the Bluebook for Law Review. They are mostly the same, but arranged differently. I also have The Redbook, which is a handbook of legal style. This was also required for my legal writing class, but I hardly opened it. I used to have a Strunk and White, but I can't find it right now. I also have a couple of Spanish/English dictionaries, and I think I have a Latin/English dictionary around here somewhere.
1 comment:
Your mentioning of Black Law's Dictionary reminded me that I have a couple of medical terminology reference books at my office that I keep on hand.
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