June 30, 2009

Dear Fellow Communicators in English,

You must have thought that it was the British sports columnist Lynne Truss who started the big English punctuation rush with her best-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves. I thought so, too, until I stumbled on The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon, an American who used to teach English and a consummate grammarian with a Gothic touch. It turns out that Karen Gordon had come up with her delightfully instructive punctuation handbook 21 years before Lynne Truss did, and had actually released an expanded and illustrated edition of it in 2003—at least a year before Eats, Shoots & Leaves hit the London bookstores!

This is just one of the exciting and provocative features lined up this week by Jose Carillo’s English Forum for your enjoyment before, after, or in-between your English shoptalks inside the Forum. Look at the full story lineup to see what I mean:

THIS WEEK IN THE FORUM (June 27-July 3, 2009):
• Advice and Dissent: Who Really Started the Great English Punctuation Rush? (It’s an American former English teacher with a Gothic touch!)
• My Media English Watch: Grammatically, Semantically Troublesome Threesome (Front-page leads trip over commas, a wrong conjunction, and a misplaced modifier!)
• Essays by Jose Carillo: When Even the Passive Voice Isn’t Enough (Dare to cleave single-clause sentences for semantic emphasis!)
• Going Deeper into English: A Huge Treasure Trove of Great Short Stories (The very best from Miguel Cervantes to John Updike!)
• News and Commentary: Philippines Warned to Boost English Skills or Risk Ending Its Current BPO boom (But do we really need an Australian to tell us that?)
• Getting to Know English: Lesson #9 – Getting to Know the Prepositional Phrases (Some verbs and adjectives are so picky with their partner prepositions!)
• Time Out from English Grammar: Twixt Mathematics, Technology, and Ancient Religious Belief (Is mathematics a human invention or a cosmic—and possibly divine—order?)

I know that you couldn’t wait to read these stories, so come on over now without delay. See you at the Forum!

With my best wishes,

Joe Carillo

And also, given that the beaches are sandy, waves easily mixed the waters with sands (and sometimes muds), thus, a dirtier thicker look of the sea.

But sometimes, who cares if it’s dirty, right?

For those beach lovers, you must see the beaches at Laiya, Batangas.. Really worth it… (except for the dirty waters).

For the beach goers, please,,, don’t throw your wastes and garbage in the beach, there are lots of trash cans out there.

For the blogger, we’ll wait for your next blogs and new adventures..

also, there’s no beach in La Virginia, but the place is good… You may rent the Pagoda for 15k I think. It has a private pool.