你或许正需要的一本英语实用手册
在学习英文的过程中，有没有感觉到“不知道自己说的写的正不正确”，“不知道这个词到底该怎么用”－－然后你去百度搜索，很高兴的得到一个 “权威”答案，结果若干年后发现原来他也在胡说 -- I bet you are not alone.
有很多网站在致力于提升语言使用的能力和准确性。例如美国知乎－－Quora, 很多国人发现这是一个非常好的学习工具：很多人想了解中国，我们想学习英语。 例如wordreference, 有很多的grammarian, linguistists参与讨论，给出一个靠谱的答案。网站etymology提供了“这个词是怎么来的”； 再例如Grammar Girl,在网站Quick and Dirty Tips上可以阅读，有对应的podcast 和相关的出版。
总之：想把语言用的准确很难；对我们不是母语的学习者来说是特别难。除了上述资源之外，推荐给你一本书Pratical English Usage. 这本书网上就有下载，当然这也是一本值得购买的英文学习工具书.
今天我们一起看一下介绍, 尤其是“How important is correctness"的部分。
Level
适用人群
The book is intended for higher level students of English and for teachers. Being a reference book, it contains information at various levels, ranging from relatively simple points to quite advanced problems.
Correctness
是是非非
If people say that a form is not 'correct', they can mean several different things. They may for instance be referring to a sentence like *I have seen her yesterday, which normally only occurs in the English of foreigners. They may be thinking of a usage like less people (instead of fewer people), which is common in standard English but regarded as wrong by some people. Or they may be talking about forms like *ain't or 'double negatives', which are used in speech by many British and American people, but which do not occur in the standard dialects and are not usually written. This book is mainly concerned with the first kind of 'correctness': the differences between British or American English and 'foreign' English. However, there is also information about cases of divided usage in standard English, and about a few important dialect forms.
How important is correctness?
放心犯错，少犯大错
If someone makes too many mistakes in a foreign language, he or she can be difficult to understand, so a reasonable level of correctness is important. However, it is quite unnecessary to speak or write a language perfectly in order to communicate effectively (very few adults in fact achieve a perfect command of another language).
Learners should aim to avoid serious mistakes (and a book like Practical English Usage will help considerably with this) ; but they should not become obsessed with correctness, or worry every time they make a mistake. Grammar is not the most important thing in the world!
说白了就是，这就是我们为什么说“要勇敢犯错”，因为每个人都难免犯错。因此这本书的意义就是 -- 枕边书. "Its purpose is practical: to give learnersand their teachers the most important information they need in order to deal with common language problems.
此书的开端部分列出了初、中、高级学习者常犯的一些错误，我们可以用来自查，以便顺藤摸瓜。