Aims And The Plan

by Ambrose Bierce

　　The author's main purpose in this book is to teach precision inwriting; and of good writing (which, essentially, is clear thinkingmade visible) precision is the point of capital concern. It isattained by choice of the word that accurately and adequatelyexpresses what the writer has in mind, and by exclusion of that whicheither denotes or connotes something else. As Quintilian puts it, thewriter should so write that his reader not only may, but must,understand.

　　Few words have more than one literal and serviceable meaning, howevermany metaphorical, derivative, related, or even unrelated, meaningslexicographers may think it worth while to gather from all sorts andconditions of men, with which to bloat their absurd and misleadingdictionaries. This actual and serviceable meaning—not alwaysdetermined by derivation, and seldom by popular usage—is the oneaffirmed, according to his light, by the author of this little manualof solecisms. Narrow etymons of the mere scholar and loose locutionsof the ignorant are alike denied a standing.

　　The plan of the book is more illustrative than expository, the aimbeing to use the terms of etymology and syntax as little as iscompatible with clarity, familiar example being more easilyapprehended than technical precept. When both are employed the preceptis commonly given after the example has prepared the student to applyit, not only to the matter in mind, but to similar matters notmentioned. Everything in quotation marks is to be understood asdisapproved.

　　Not all locutions blacklisted herein are always to be reprobated asuniversal outlaws. Excepting in the case of capitaloffenders—expressions ancestrally vulgar or irreclaimablydegenerate—absolute proscription is possible as to seriouscomposition only; in other forms the writer must rely on his sense ofvalues and the fitness of things. While it is true that somecolloquialisms and, with less of license, even some slang, may besparingly employed in light literature, for point, piquancy or any ofthe purposes of the skilled writer sensible to the necessity and charmof keeping at least one foot on the ground, to others the virtue ofrestraint may be commended as distinctly superior to the joy ofindulgence.

　　Precision is much, but not all; some words and phrases are disallowedon the ground of taste. As there are neither standards nor arbiters oftaste, the book can do little more than reflect that of its author,who is far indeed from professing impeccability. In neither taste norprecision is any man's practice a court of last appeal, for writersall, both great and small, are habitual sinners against the light; andtheir accuser is cheerfully aware that his own work will supply (as inmaking this book it has supplied) many "awful examples"—his laterwork less abundantly, he hopes, than his earlier. He neverthelessbelieves that this does not disqualify him for showing by otherinstances than his own how not to write. The infallible teacher isstill in the forest primeval, throwing seeds to the white blackbirds.

　　A.B.