Jan Freeman, Write it Right - 4 March 2010

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🗓️ 4 March 2010

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

Write it Right One hundred years ago, American journalist and satirist Ambrose Bierce published a curmudgeonly book of writing advice called Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. In her new book, Boston Globe language columnist Jan Freeman explains where Bierce got his ideas about language, how his grammatical convictions compared with those of his contemporaries, and what they teach us about English today. The book is Ambrose Bierce's Write It Right: The Celebrated Cynic's Language Peeves Deciphered, Appraised, and Annotated for 21st-Century Readers. Recently, Freeman talked with Grant about Bierce and his cranky advice for speaking and writing well. http://www.amazon.com/Ambrose-Bierces-Write-Right-21st-Century/dp/0802717683 You can read much more by Jan Freeman (and we recommend that you do) in the archives of her columns in the Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/jan_freeman/ -- "A Way with Words" is made of paper: drop a few bills in the donation jar today: http://www.waywordradio.org/donate/ . Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time: Email: [email protected] Phone: United States toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673 London +44 20 7193 2113 Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771 Site: http://waywordradio.org/ Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate/ Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/ Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/ Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/ Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2010, Wayword LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spark your creativity with the Sims. Sometimes you might feel like you're not creative
0:06.7	and you have to go in search of your creative spark again. Maybe this is catching up with
0:11.3	creative friends, experimenting with a new look or trying out a new recipe.
0:15.7	And thanks to The Sims, inspiration is just one game and one spark away.
0:21.1	Ready to spark something? Download the Sims 4 and play for free. You're listening to Away With Words, I'm Grant Barrett.
0:35.0	Welcome to a special mini-cast.
0:37.0	Today we're talking to Jan Freeman.
0:39.0	She is a language columnist for the Boston Globe and author of the new book Ambrose Bierces's
0:44.0	write it right the celebrated cynics language peves deciphered, appraised and
0:48.1	annotated for 21st century readers. What a heck of a subtitle Jan.. Yes, well, we need to have long subtitles these days to tell you exactly what the book is about,
0:57.0	because it's a little bit complicated in this case.
1:00.0	Who was Ambrose Spears? Why do we care about his usage advice?
1:03.8	I'm not sure we care that much about his usage advice,
1:07.3	except if he reflects his time 100 years ago in America.
1:11.6	But a lot of people care a lot about Ambrose, who was quite a well-known
1:16.7	journalist in his time.
1:18.3	He's the author of The Devil's Dictionary, which last I knew had a fan club on Facebook calling him the baddest
1:24.5	asked lexicographer who ever lived and that book as his fans know is full of
1:30.1	definitions like love a temporary insanity curable by marriage now
1:36.4	Bierce was also a young civil war veteran he wrote a lot of stories about the
1:41.9	civil war and some very twilight zone stories too, which people
1:46.5	consider early science fiction or fantasy.
	...

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