Write It Right
by Ambrose Bierce
Several hundred of Biers' students are in labor. Bierce's list contains some of the differences that are still familiar today — fewer rules versus the smaller, lying and lying — but it's also full of now-forgotten shibolets: The applause that critics of his time agreed on meant a Roman victory rather than a round of applause. A poorly formed coin, it was reliable for separatists, not for separatists. The donation was ambitious, there had to be danger, humiliation meant "self-humiliation", not "humiliation". And Beers did some of his own squeaks to take good precautions. We should say "paint coating," he instructed, not "jacket."
