A winning oddityThe thing about law is that you are so familiar with the terminology that you do not realise how odd it can sound.

Take Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service by Gerard Forlin, which has just won the annual Diagram prize for the oddest book title of the year.

The competition was fierce, but Mr Forlin won 35% of the vote from readers of trade magazine The Bookseller, fighting off (honestly): Fancy Coffins to Make Yourself; The Flat-Footed Flies of Europe; Lightweight Sandwich Construction; Tea Bag Folding; and The Art and Craft of Pounding Flowers: No Paint, No Ink, Just a Hammer! The prize has been awarded since 1978, when Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice streaked home.

Since then, such titles as American Bottom Archaeology and High-Performance Stiffened Structures (an engineering publication) have triumphed.