Ambrose Bierce - Write It Right. A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults

"He lives three squares away." A city block is seldom square.

Absurd.

"The patient stands pain well." "He would not stand for misrepresentation."

"He stated that he came from Chicago." "It is stated that the president is angry." We state a proposition, or a principle, but say that we are well. And we say our prayers – some of us.

"The rain still continues." Omit still; it is contained in the other word.

"I take no stock in it." Disagreeably commercial. Say, I have no faith in it. Many such metaphorical expressions were unobjectionable, even pleasing, in the mouth of him who first used them, but by constant repetition by others have become mere slang, with all the offensiveness of plagiarism. The prime objectionableness of slang is its hideous lack of originality. Until mouth-worn it is not slang.

"Prayer will not stop the ravages of cholera." Stop is frequently misused for stay in another sense of the latter word: "He is stopping at the hotel." Stopping is not a continuing act; one cannot be stopping who has already stopped.

A word recently introduced and now overworked, meaning a task, or performance in one's trade, or calling, – doubtless a variant of stint, without that word's suggestion of allotment and limitation. It is still in the reptilian stage of evolution.

Legitimate enough, but ugly and needless. "He was subsequently hanged." Say, afterward.

Why?

"The project was a success." Say, was successful. Success should not have the indefinite article.

There is illustrious authority for this – in poetry. Poets are a lawless folk, and may do as they please so long as they do please.

"He had such weak legs that he could not stand." The absurdity of this is made obvious by changing the form of the statement: "His legs were such weak that he could not stand." If the word is an adverb in the one sentence it is in the other. "He is such a great bore that none can endure him." Say, so great a bore.

This is never a verb. "He suicided." Say, He killed himself, or He took his own life. See Commit Suicide .

To supererogate is to overpay, or to do more than duty requires. But the excess must be in the line of duty; merely needless and irrelevant action is not supererogation. The word is not a natural one, at best.

"They will come, sure." Slang.

Survival is an outliving, or outlasting of something else. "The custom survives" is wrong, but a custom may survive its utility. Survive is a transitive verb.

"He sustained an injury." "He sustained a broken neck." That means that although his neck was broken he did not yield to the mischance.

These are both past participles, but there was once the verb to gift, whereas there was never the verb "to talent." If Nature did not talent a person the person is not talented.

"Apology is tantamount to confession." Let this ugly word alone; it is not only illegitimate, but ludicrously suggests catamount.

Vulgar.

"The house was torn down." This is an indigenous solecism; they do not say so in England.

See Whom .

A little word that is terribly overworked. It is needlessly affixed to names of most diseases: "the cholera," "the smallpox," "the scarlet fever," and such. Some escape it: we do not say, "the sciatica," nor "the locomotor ataxia." It is too common in general propositions, as, "The payment of interest is the payment of debt." "The virtues that are automatic are the best." "The tendency to falsehood should be checked." "Kings are not under the control of the law." It is impossible to note here all forms of this misuse, but a page of almost any book will supply abundant instance. We do not suffer so abject slavery to the definite article as the French, but neither do we manifest their spirit of rebellion by sometimes cutting off the oppressor's tail. One envies the Romans, who had no article, definite or indefinite.

"Washington wrote the following." The following what? Put in the noun. "The following animals are ruminants." It is not the animals that follow, but their names.

"They cooked the flesh of the lion and ate the same." "An old man lived in a cave, and the same was a cripple." In humorous composition this may do, though it is not funny; but in serious work use the regular pronoun.

"The then governor of the colony." Say, the governor of the colony at that time.

"Those kind of things." Almost too absurd for condemnation, and happily not very common out of the class of analphabets.

"She wept as though her heart was broken." Many good writers, even some devoid of the lexicographers' passion for inclusion and approval, have specifically defended this locution, backing their example by their precept. Perhaps it is a question of taste; let us attend their cry and pass on.

"A thrifty village." To thrive is an end; thrift is a means to that end.

"The lecturer is through talking." "I am through with it." Say, I have done with it.

As part of an infinitive it should not be separated from the other part by an adverb, as, "to hastily think," for hastily to think, or, to think hastily. Condemnation of the split infinitive is now pretty general, but it is only recently that any one seems to have thought of it. Our forefathers and we elder writers of this generation used it freely and without shame – perhaps because it had not a name, and our crime could not be pointed out without too much explanation.

"We have been to church," "I was to the theater." One can go to a place, but one cannot be to it.

"The figures totaled 10,000." Say, The total of the figures was 10,000.

"The policeman struck the man with his club, but the transaction was not reported." "The picking of a pocket is a criminal transaction." In a transaction two or more persons must have an active or assenting part; as, a business transaction, Transactions of the Geographical Society, etc. The Society's action would be better called Proceedings.

"This event transpired in 1906." Transpire ( trans , through, and spirare , to breathe) means leak out, that is, become known. What transpired in 1906 may have occurred long before.