On 20 Dec, 00:32, "Colin J. Williams" <c...@ncf.ca> wrote: > Thomas Heller wrote: > > Mark Summerfield schrieb: > >> Just a follow-up to say that the book has now been published in the > >> U.S. > >> It is now in stock at InformIT, and should reach other stores, e.g., > >> Amazon, in a week or so. > > >> Also, the introduction, the first few pages of the first chapter, the > >> whole of chapter 12 (regular expressions), and the index are now > >> available for free download in a PDF from here: > >>http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0137129297 > > > Question from a non-native english speaker: is this now valid english? > > > "One of Python's great strengths" > > ^ > > "and also teaches Python's functional programming features" > > ^ > > "The book's approach is wholly practical" > > ^ > > > Curious, > > Thomas > > No. Is this a quote from some > advertising stuff or was it written by > the author? > > Colin W.
All three fragments are taken from the book's Introduction, and all are correct English---both U.S. and British as it happens. (You can read them in context by downloading the sample pages PDF.) See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe You'll also find a few instances of possessive plurals (s') in later chapters:-) The whole book was proof read by a professional (American) proof reader---in addition to the several technical reviewers who read it. There is one point of (minor) controversy in my English usage---I make my writing gender-neutral by using singular they. This is valid in both U.S. and British English but doesn't seem to be very common, but I much prefer it to all the alternatives I've seen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they With two dozen postings on my use of English I'm now rather nervous about the feeback I'll get on my Python 3! PS Although Amazon.com still says the publication date is the 27th, they now expect to have it in stock on Monday (the 22nd). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
