"Good Writing Guide" by HarperCollins

In general, I am quite meticulous with my (English) grammar and sentence structures. In the near future, expect an upgrade from meticulous to anal.

My father’s friend recently flew into Melbourne, and offered to ferry some goods to me. Together with a box of mooncakes, my parents also gave me a book entitled “Good Writing Guide” by HarperCollins.

It is a very beautiful book, but unfortunately, a rough transit had fucked it up a bit. Sigh.

The cover is metallic lavender in colour with a matt surface finish, and the title is printed in large narrow font, coloured in extremely bright pink gloss ink. It sounds horrible, but when was the last time you saw a lavender coloured book?



I snipped some lavender blooms from a neighbour's flower pots to illustrate the colour of this book

So far, this book appears to be a very well written book; not many can write about grammar in an engaging manner. Observe:

I saw you in my underwear!

Could mean either I saw you when I was wearing only my underwear, or, more ominously, I saw you, wearing my underwear!

Good Writing Guide is published in the United Kingdom, which means it is not teaching American English. I’m biased against American English.


***

In other language related issues, I recently discovered/ was shown a few interesting things that I probably should have known earlier.

For example,

炸
zhá – deep-fry
zhà – explode

I never knew zhá existed- I always said zhà regardless of referring to car bombs or potato chips.


石头
shí tou (sounds like tòu), not shí tóu



Interesting reads