Barry Kalb's work with hundreds of Chinese from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia has given him an insight into the problems native Chinese speakers encounter when trying to write English. This book is an easy-to-follow guide to correcting these problems.

The Penguin Writers' Guides series provides authoritative, succinct and easy-to-follow guidance on specific aspects of written English. Whether you need to brush up your skills or get to grips with something for the first time, these invaluable Guides will help you find the best way to get your message across clearly and effectively. This essential guide covers the key rules - and pitfalls - of written and spoken grammar. It covers such areas as: the building blocks of language, common errors and misconceptions, choosing the right level of expression, differences between British and American English, and political correctness. It also discusses various uses of language, from creative writing, CVs and reports to verbal presentations, and business and personal letters, with many useful suggestions for accurate and fluent English.

Hundreds of books have been written on the art of writing. Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manuscripts into published novels and short stories. In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.

How to Write Effective Business English gives guidance to both native and non-native English speakers on how to express yourself clearly and concisely. With case studies and real-life examples that demonstrate how English is used internationally in business, and full of ideas to help you get your communications right first time, How to Write Effective Business English sets the scene for describing the benefits of good Business English, ideal for multinational companies where communication is a priority. For native English speakers, it may mean un-learning things you were taught at school and learning how to save time by getting to the point more quickly in emails; for elementary to immediate English speakers, it focuses on the areas that are easy to get wrong. How to Write Effective Business English draws on the author's wealth of experience, using real-life international business scenarios to develop your skills and provide you with some answers that even your boss might not know. You will learn a system to help you quickly and easily write emails, letters, CVs and more. Featuring sections on punctuation and grammar, and checklists to help you assess how you are getting on before moving on to the next stage, How to Write Business English has been praised by both native and non-native writers of English as an indispensable resource.

Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.

The Story Behind THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE If you've read his books THE WAR OF ART and TURNING PRO, you know that for thirty years Steven Pressfield (GATES OF FIRE, THE AFGHAN CAMPAIGN etc.) wrote spec novel after spec novel before any publisher took him seriously. How did he finally break through? Ignoring just about every rule of commercial book publishing, Pressfield's "first" novel not only became a major bestseller (over 250,000 copies sold), it was adapted into a feature film directed by Robert Redford and starring Matt Damon, Will Smith, and Charlize Theron. Where did he get the idea? What magical something did THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE have that his previous manuscripts lacked? Why did Pressfield decide to write a novel when he already had a well established screenwriting career? How does writing a publishable novel really work? Taking a page from John Steinbeck's classic JOURNAL OF A NOVEL, Steven Pressfield offers answers for these and scores of other practical writing questions in THE AUTHENTIC SWING.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Politics and the English Language, the second in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell takes aim at the language used in politics, which, he says, ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’. In an age where the language used in politics is constantly under the microscope, Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is just as relevant today, and gives the reader a vital understanding of the tactics at play. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

The Grammar Crammer is a concise, sensible grammar handbook that explains lucidly how to remember correct word forms and sentence structures. Useful as a reference tool for high school and beyond, it packs an entire grammar encyclopedia into just over a hundred pages.

This is an essential book for everyone who wants to write clearly about any subject and use writing as a means of learning.

How to Write Effective Business English gives guidance to both native and non-native English speakers on how to express yourself clearly and concisely. With case studies and real-life examples that demonstrate how English is used internationally in business, and full of ideas to help you get your communications right first time, this book sets the scene for describing the benefits of good Business English, ideal for multinational companies where communication is a priority. For native English speakers, it may mean un-learning things you were taught at school and learning how to save time by getting to the point more quickly in emails; for elementary to immediate English speakers, it focuses on the areas that are easy to get wrong. How to Write Effective Business English uses real-life international business scenarios to develop your skills and provide you with some answers that even your boss might not know. You will learn a system to help you quickly and easily write emails, letters, CVs and more. Featuring sections on punctuation and grammar, checklists to help assess progress and now with a new chapter on how to write effectively for social media, How to Write Effective Business English has been praised by both native and non-native writers of English as an indispensable resource.