Ambrose Bierce's Write it right : the celebrated cynic's language peeves deciphered, appraised, and annotated for 21st-century readers

著者

書誌事項

Ambrose Bierce's Write it right : the celebrated cynic's language peeves deciphered, appraised, and annotated for 21st-century readers

[introduction by] Jan Freeman

Walker & Co., 2009

1st U.S. ed

  • : hbk

大学図書館所蔵 件 / 全2件

この図書・雑誌をさがす

注記

Includes bibliographical references

収録内容

  • Introduction by Jan Freeman
  • Aims and the plan by Ambrose Bierce
  • The blacklist

内容説明・目次

内容説明

One of America's foremost language experts presents an annotated edition of A mbrose Bierce's classic catalog of correct speech. Ambrose Bierce is best known for The Devil's Dictionary, but the prolific journalist, satirist, and fabulist was also a usage maven. In 1909, he published several hundred of his pet peeves in Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Bierce's list includes some distinctions still familiar today--the which-that rule, less vs. fewer, lie and lay -- but it also abounds in now-forgotten shibboleths: Ovation, the critics of his time agreed, meant a Roman triumph, not a round of applause. Reliable was an ill-formed coinage, not for the discriminating. Donate was pretentious, jeopardize should be jeopard, demean meant "comport oneself," not "belittle." And Bierce made up a few peeves of his own for good measure. We should say "a coating of paint," he instructed, not "a coat." To mark the 100th anniversary of Write It Right, language columnist Jan Freeman has investigated where Bierce's rules and taboos originated, how they've fared in the century since the blacklist, and what lies ahead. Will our language quibbles seem as odd in 2109 as Bierce's do today? From the evidence offered here, it looks like a very good bet.

「Nielsen BookData」 より

詳細情報

ページトップへ