Ambrose Bierce - Write it Right

Bill Bryson is a marvellous writer and I have all of his books and have enjoyed each for their own merits. While I enjoy his travel writing the most (for example, In A Sunburned Country, Notes from a Small Island, and The Lost Continent) followed by his autobiogaphical and other works (such as I'm a Stranger Here Myself, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and A Short History of Nearly Everything), there is one odd ringer in there. Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors is primarily a reference book and is, to my mind, an extremely eclectic collection of information that might be of use to a writer.

While I don't hold it in the same regard as his other works, it is still intriguing. Every three or four months I have to, owing to constantly acquiring new books, winnow my collection and consign some portion to storage. Which books do I absolutely have to keep to hand, which ones am I likely to read in the next few months, which ones might be useful? Despite being an odd little volume, Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors has survived several clearance cycles.

Among the reasons for its durability are the surprises. Looking up some other item, I came across Bryson's discussion of the use of "over" for "more than" in which he references Ambrose Bierce's Write it Right. Bierce I know from his ascerbic The Devil's Dictionary, as well as his short stories such as An Incident at Owl Creek.

Write it Right is not simply a writer's guide to style, but is, in Bierce's fashion, A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. It is still in print (as linked above) but on backorder. Gutenberg has a free electronic version of Write it Right, A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults, should you want to see what was on Bierce's pet peeve list. As Bryson says, it is "a usage book teeming with quirky recommendations, many of which you will find repeated nowhere.