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

A corruption of endwise.

"The man is not entitled to draw rations." Say, entitled to rations. Entitled is not to be followed by an infinitive.

Properly, an episode is a narrative that is a subordinate part of another narrative. An occurrence considered by itself is not an episode.

"This is equally as good." Omit as. "He was of the same age, and equally as tall." Say, equally tall.

"My salary is equivalent to yours."

This solecism is common among the best writers of this country and England. "It is essential to go early"; "Irrigation is essential to cultivation of arid lands," and so forth. One thing is essential to another thing only if it is of the essence of it – an important and indispensable part of it, determining its nature; the soul of it.

"An even dozen."

"The president had every confidence in him."

"Every now and then." This is nonsense: there can be no such thing as a now and then, nor, of course, a number of now and thens. Now and then is itself bad enough, reversing as it does the sequence of things, but it is idiomatic and there is no quarreling with it. But "every" is here a corruption of ever, meaning repeatedly, continually.

"Ex-President," "an ex-convict," and the like. Say, former. In England one may say, Mr. Roosevelt, sometime President; though the usage is a trifle archaic.

A heritage from the text-books. "An example in arithmetic." An equally bad word for the same thing is "sum": "Do the sum," for Solve the problem.

"The disease is excessively painful." "The weather is excessively cold." Anything that is painful at all is excessively so. Even a slight degree or small amount of what is disagreeable or injurious is excessive – that is to say, redundant, superfluous, not required.

"The condemned man was executed." He was hanged, or otherwise put to death; it is the sentence that is executed.

An executive session of a deliberative body is a session for executive business, as distinguished from legislative. It is commonly secret, but a secret session is not necessarily executive.

"I expect he will go." Say, I believe ( suppose or think ) he will go; or, I expect him to go.

The former word is frequently used, even in laws and ordinances, as a euphemism for the latter. It not only means something entirely different, but to one with a Latin ear is far more offensive.

"The sinner experienced a change of heart." This will do if said lightly or mockingly. It does not indicate a serious frame of mind in the speaker.

"He extended an invitation." One does not always hold out an invitation in one's hand; it may be spoken or sent.

"He failed to note the hour." That implies that he tried to note it, but did not succeed. Failure carries always the sense of endeavor; when there has been no endeavor there is no failure. A falling stone cannot fail to strike you, for it does not try; but a marksman firing at you may fail to hit you; and I hope he always will.

"The child favors its father."

"The doctor felt of the patient's head." "Smell of" and "taste of" are incorrect too.

"A feminine member of the club." Feminine refers, not to sex proper, but to gender, which may be defined as the sex of words. The same is true of masculine.

Fetching includes, not only bringing, but going to get – going for and returning with. You may bring what you did not go for.

"His financial reward"; "he is financially responsible," and so forth.

If this word could mean anything it would mean firstlike, whatever that might mean. The ordinal numbers should have no adverbial form: "firstly," "secondly," and the rest are words without meaning.

This is, in America, a word-of-all-work, most frequently meaning repair, or prepare. Do not so use it.

The word is sometimes spelled forbears, a worse spelling than the other, but not much. If used at all it should be spelled forebeers , for it means those who have been before. A forebe-er is one who fore-was. Considered in any way, it is a senseless word.

For this abominable word we are indebted to the weather bureau – at least it was not sent upon us until that affliction was with us. Let us hope that it may some day be losted from the language.

Indicating the first and the second of things previously named, these words are unobjectionable if not too far removed from the names that they stand for. If they are they confuse, for the reader has to look back to the names. Use them sparingly.

Tautological. Say, obsequies; the word is now used in none but a funereal sense.

"After many preliminary examinations he was fully committed for trial." The adverb is meaningless: a defendant is never partly committed for trial. This is a solecism to which lawyers are addicted. And sometimes they have been heard to say "fullied."

"He was out of funds." Funds are not money in general, but sums of money or credit available for particular purposes.

"Taxation furnished the money." A pauper may furnish a house if some one will provide the furniture, or the money to buy it. "His flight furnishes a presumption of guilt." It supplies it.

"The winds are generally high." "A fool is generally vain." This misuse of the word appears to come of abbreviating: Generally speaking, the weather is bad. A fool, to speak generally, is vain.

Vulgar exceedingly.

This word, meaning polite, or well mannered, was once in better repute than it is now, and its noun, gentility, is still not infrequently found in the work of good writers. Genteel is most often used by those who write, as the Scotchman of the anecdote joked – wi' deeficulty.

It is not possible to teach the correct use of this overworked word: one must be bred to it. Everybody knows that it is not synonymous with man, but among the "genteel" and those ambitious to be thought "genteel" it is commonly so used in discourse too formal for the word "gent." To use the word gentleman correctly, be one.