Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults

What It's About

Write It Right is Ambrose Bierce's alphabetically arranged blacklist of words and phrases he considered misused, redundant, or otherwise offensive to correct English. Each entry names the fault, supplies the accurate word or construction, and often adds a barbed illustrative sentence skewering the error in practice. It reads less like a dry grammar than a running exercise in Bierce's characteristic causticism.

Key Concepts

Underlying the individual entries is a consistent argument: that precision in language reflects precision in thought, and that popular usage is no excuse for imprecision. Bierce is particularly scornful of "genteelisms" — pretentious substitutions favoured by speakers trying to sound refined — and insists on strict etymological correctness over convenience or fashion. Some of his rulings (which/that, lie/lay, less/fewer) remain familiar style guidance today; others target now-forgotten distinctions that will strike modern readers as arbitrary or eccentric.

About the Author

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914, exact date of death unconfirmed) was an American journalist, short-story writer, and satirist known for his mordant wit. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War, an experience that shaped much of his later fiction, and worked for decades as a columnist in San Francisco. In late 1913 he travelled to Mexico, then in the throes of revolution, and vanished without a confirmed trace.