This weblog will post daily individual entries from Ambrose Bierce's amusing syllabus of stylistic errors, Write It Right. Though nearly a century old, and therefore safely out of copyright, most of his advice is surprisingly topical. I had not, for instance, realized that ‘bogus’ was known as slang in 1909, much less that it was already invading respectable speech.

I plan to post each day's entry shortly after midnight eastern time, so it will be available first thing in the morning to readers in North America and Western Europe. Out-of-town trips will necessitate occasionally skipping a day or double-posting, but I will keep to the one-per-day schedule in the long run. Of course, if anyone wishes to contribute towards buying me a laptop so I can post while out of town, I will be extremely grateful.

Unlike an ordinary blog, this one is arranged top-down, with the latest post at the bottom. This seems more appropriate to a literary corpus. Regular readers will be able to jump straight to the latest entry, or the latest unread entry, by using the calendar at the top of the right-hand column.

Comments are open. Please try to contribute something useful. Those that are rude, inane, or irrelevant will be deleted without apology or explanation. General arguments about prescriptive versus descriptive grammar are also usually pointless. What I am looking for is judgment: Is Bierce's advice on a particular point good or bad, pertinent or obsolete?

I haven't tried to make an exact count, but there are roughly 400 entries in Write It Right, so this weblog should provide a year or so of diversion and (I hope) instruction. Readers may also wish to take a look at the other Lanx Satura weblogs in the right margin.