title: Torn Wings and Faux Pas: A Flashbook of Style, a Beastly Guide Through the Writer's Labyrinth
author:  Karen Elizabeth Gordon 
description: The author of <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ISBN=0679418601/${0}">The Deluxe Transitive Vampire</a></i> and <i><a href="/exec/obidos/ISBN=0395628830/${0}">The New Well-Tempered Sentence</a></i> returns with a styleguide for the gothic set, featuring a cast of feathered duchesses, baby dragons, and lascivious banditti. As always, Karen Elizabeth Gordon's sample sentences are beguiling enough to distract even the staunchest logophile from the matter at hand. Nonetheless, she manages to tidily dispose of some of the English language's most ancient and troublesome dilemmas, from the difference between "affect" and "effect" to the intricacies of the split-infinitive debate. Enhanced by the tiny, whimsical line drawings of Rikki Ducornet, this is one styleguide you just might read like a novel.
zlib_text: ![Book cover image](images/9780007494552_epub_cover.jpg)
  
  
  ![ALEX BARCLAYKilling Ways](images/9780007494552_epub_002.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  ### [Copyright](9780007494552_epub_itoc.xhtml#d17a38f895e33-d1e32)
  
  
  An imprint of HarperCollins _Publishers_
  
  
  1 London Bridge Street,
  
  
  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
  
  
  [www.harpercollins.co.uk](http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
  
  
  Published by HarperCollins _Publishers_ 2015
  
  
  Copyright © Alex Barclay 2015
  
  
  Cover design layout © HarperCollins _Publishers_ 2015
  
  
  Cover photographs © Tony Watson/Arcangel Images (subway); Eliada Toska/Getty
  Images (woman running); [Shutterstock.com](http://Shutterstock.com) (wing)
  
  
  Alex Barclay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this
  work
  
  
  This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents
  portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
  actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
  
  
  All rights reserved under International and 