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English is the language of international commerce and communication.
You Can Write Better English (an 82 page book by Barry Kalb) is a practical handbook to help improve written English, with special focus on mistakes native Chinese speakers routinely make when writing in the language.
iCUBED.us is delighted to present to our readers a twelve part mini-series (first published in MingPao) about writing proper English, in the American style...
 
posted 21 Jan 2011
Over the past months, I've discussed points of English grammar that native Chinese
speakers routinely get wrong: singulars and plurals, articles (the words "the," "a" and "an"), punctuation (commas, periods and other marks), and verb tenses. These points, small as they might seem, are essential: incorrect grammar not only looks bad, but it can cause confusion and misunderstanding – and misunderstanding can cost you and others time, money and embarrassment.
As I wrote a couple of weeks back, however, just because something is grammatically correct does ot necessarily make it good writing. My book, "You Can Write Better English," starts with a series of rules for good writing, and I want to emphasize the most important of these here.
These are rules that are frequently violated by Hong Kong writers.
The first rule is, keep it simple. Don't load up your writing with unnecessary words. When someone designs a machine, he doesn't include extra parts; the design includes only those parts needed to make the machine operate efficiently. A sentence should be written the same way: only those words needed to make your point. Delete everything else.
The second rule: get to the point. If you have something important to say, say it in the first paragraph of your press release or business letter. Check the "news" sections of Hong Kong's university and political party websites and you'll see what I mean. You often have to wade through ten lines before you get to the real point of the press release. This is not only bad writing, it's ineffective. You'll put your readers to sleep or drive them away before they ever find what you're trying to tell them.
Equally important: make it understandable. You can fill your writing with vital information, you can organize it carefully – but if nobody can understand what you've written, it's all a waste of time. This is admittedly a problem for someone writing in a second language, like English. Your vocabulary might not be perfect. You might not have mastered the way words are put together in an English sentence. But if you want your writing to have any effect, you must learn to write so the average person reading it can understand.
Finally, edit yourself. Too many people dash off a bit of writing, punch the "send" button without looking it over, and off it goes, errors and all. If you take the time to re-read it, you'll spot grammatical errors, vocabulary errors, things you forgot to include, things you could have explained better. It takes a bit of extra effort, but if something is important enough to write it in the first place...it's important enough to write correctly.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Barry Kalb has taught reporting and news writing at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre since 2005, emphasizing the basics of good English writing. His 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 the language.
...published by Journalism and Media Studies Center, The University of Hong Kong in association with HK University Press. Order YOURS at: HKU PRESS
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