Write It Right A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults
By Ambrose Bierce
The author’s primary purpose in this book is to teach precision in writing. Precision is the point of capital concern of good writing (which is clear thinking made visible). It is attained by the word choice that accurately and adequately expresses what the writer has in mind and by excluding that which either denotes or connotes something else. As Quintilian puts it, the writer should write that his reader not only may but must understand.
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Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – c. 1914) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran.
Biography
His book The Devil’s Dictionary was named one of “The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature” by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” has been described as “one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature”, and his book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (also published as Amid Life) was named by the Grolier Club one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900. A prolific and versatile writer, Bierce was regarded as one of the most influential journalists in the United States and a pioneering realist fiction writer. For his horror writing, Michael Dirda ranked him alongside Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. S. T. Joshi speculates that he may be the greatest satirist America has ever produced and, in this regard, can take his place with such figures as Juvenal, Swift, and Voltaire. His war stories influenced Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, and others, and he was considered an influential and feared literary critic. In recent decades, Bierce has gained more comprehensive respect as a fabulist and for his poetry.
In 1913, Bierce told reporters he was travelling to Mexico to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He disappeared and was never seen again. Bierce was born in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio, on June 24, 1842, to Marcus Aurelius Bierce (1799–1876) and Laura Sherwood Bierce. He was of English ancestry: all of his forebears came to North America between 1620 and 1640 as part of the Great Puritan Migration. He often wrote critically about “Puritan values” and people who “made a fuss” about genealogy. He was the tenth of thirteen children, all of whom were given names by their father beginning with the letter “A”: in order of birth, the Bierce siblings were Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, Adelia, and Aurelia. His mother was a descendant of William Bradford. His parents were a poor but literary couple who instilled in him a deep love for books and writing. Bierce grew up in Kosciusko County, Indiana, attending high school at the county seat in Warsaw. He left home at 15 to become a printer’s devil at a small abolitionist newspaper, the Northern Indianan.
Ambrose Bierce
