English Language: Text examples

1. ...with its golden beaches and warm hospitality, you'll be sure to come
back to Jamaica.

2. Add the damsons, sugar and pectin and heat gently until boiling.

3. Cross the stile and walk round the perimeter of the field until you come
to a large wooden gate.

4. Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name.

5. Passengers must not cross the railway line except by means of the
footbridge. £200 PENALTY

6. RU free 2nite fluffy bunny? hugs and kisses, rambo x ps wear your ''big
socks”

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7. VICAR FURY AT PARISH MEETING WALK OUT

8. so there's this man and he walks into a bar and he says 'ow! who put
that there?'

9. [PIPS] BBC Radio 4 (.) I'm Charlotte Green (.) This is the News at 6
o'clock (.)

10. I now declare you man and wife (.)

11. the train now approaching platform 3 is the delayed 17:41 service to
Skipton (.)

[Link] God's sake Michael (.) shut the f**k up(.)

Text styles

Text 1-

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place
where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our
founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our
democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and
churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited
three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives,

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because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice
could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and
Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight,
disabled and not disabled — Americans who sent a message to the
world that we have never been a collection of red states and blue
states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Text 2-

I have no name
I am but two days old.—
What shall I call thee?
I happy am,
Joy is my name,—
Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy but two days old,
Sweet joy I call thee;
Thou dost smile.
I sing the while
Sweet joy befall thee.

Text 3 -

B: Bowel disorders, it is what it is.

I: How old were you when you first started to realize you were having
problems with your digestion?

B: I was, uh, 21 and a half, to be exact, yeah.

I: And do you suffer from celiac or, how would you define your discomfort?

B: My colonoscopy says no celiac and not inflammatory bowel disease. My

blood marker test says I have inflammatory bowel disease. I would label
myself definitely gluten intolerant.

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I: And for the record, can you describe what that means? Gluten
intolerance? As you would describe it.

B: Gluten intolerance means that you, your body just does not digest or
break down or really absorb gluten. And that is a protein that is found in
wheat. I would also say that I don’t handle processed wheat well either.
Um, and the symptoms are across the board. For me personally, um, I get,
I’ll get joint pains, exhaustion, um, and I just feel incredibly full. After four
or five bites, if I’m having, say, pasta or something where it’s just, after
four or five bites, I can’t eat anymore, feel nauseous. That’s actually
where the symptoms really first started.

I: Was there anything else beyond that? Say migraine headaches or …

B: Headaches. I have, and it’s gotten a lot better, I had, um, pretty bad
hormonal acne, is what they would call it. Went across the board trying to
treat it. I tried creams and antibiotics, retin-As, all that stuff. When I
started to cut out gluten and wheats, my skin cleared up the best it’s ever
been. I even went on Accutane and, I was on Accutane for five months
and that is exactly when my symptoms would appear. I’ve been
completely healthy my entire life.

Text 4-

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in

my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to
die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends. People
are always asking, did I know about Tyler Durden.
The barrel of the gun pressed against the back of my throat, Tyler
says, "We really won't die."
With my tongue I can feel the silencer holes we drilled into the
barrel of the gun. Most of the noise a gunshot makes is expanding
gases, and there's the tiny sonic boom a bullet makes because it
travels so fast. To make a silencer, you just drill holes in the barrel
of the gun, a lot of holes. This lets the gas escape and slows the
bullet to below the speed of sound.
You drill the holes wrong and the gun will blow off your hand. "This
isn't really death," Tyler says. "We'll be legend. We won't grow
old."
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I tongue the barrel into my cheek and say, Tyler, you're thinking of
vampires.
The building we're standing on won't be here in ten minutes. You
take a 98-percent concentration of fuming nitric acid and add the
acid to three times that amount of sulfuric acid. Do this in an ice
bath. Then add glycerin drop-by-drop with an eye dropper. You
have nitroglycerin.

I know this because Tyler knows this.

Mix the nitro with sawdust, and you have a nice plastic explosive.
A lot of folks mix their nitro with cotton and add Epsom salts as a
sulfate. This works too. Some folks, they use paraffin mixed with
nitro. Paraffin has never, ever worked for me.
So Tyler and I are on top of the Parker-Morris Building with the gun
stuck in my mouth, and we hear glass breaking. Look over the
edge. It's a cloudy day, even this high up. This is the world's tallest
building, and this high up the wind is always cold. It's so quiet this
high up, the feeling you get is that you're one of those space
monkeys. You do the little job you're trained to do.

Pull a lever.
Push a button.
You don't understand any of it, and then you just die.

One hundred and ninety-one floors up, you look over the edge of
the roof and the street below is mottled with a shag carpet of
people, standing, looking up. The breaking glass is a window right
below us. A window blows out the side of the building, and then
comes a file cabinet big as a black refrigerator, right below us a
six-drawer filing cabinet drops right out of the cliff face of the
building, and drops turning slowly, and drops getting smaller, and
drops disappearing into the packed crowd.
Somewhere in the one hundred and ninety-one floors under us,
the space monkeys in the Mischief Committee of Project Mayhem
are running wild, destroying every scrap of history.
That old saying, how you always kill the one you love, well, look, it
works both ways.
With a gun stuck in your mouth and the barrel of the gun between
your teeth, you can only talk in vowels.
We're down to our last ten minutes.
Another window blows out of the building, and glass sprays out,
sparkling flock-of-pigeons style, and then a dark wooden desk
pushed by the Mischief Committee emerges inch by inch from the
side of the building until the desk tilts and slides and turns end-
over-end into a magic flying thing lost in the crowd.
The Parker-Morris Building won't be here in nine minutes. You take
enough blasting gelatin and wrap the foundation columns of
anything, you can topple any building in the world. You have to

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tamp it good and tight with sandbags so the blast goes against the
column and not out into the parking garage around the column.
This how-to stuff isn't in any history book.

Text 5 –

LETTER TO THE READER

Hello, dear reader!

Thank you for picking up this book. Was it the cover that piqued your
interest? That luscious hair of mine streaming over my shoulders in the
photo?

Or . . . was it the title?

But why? After all, who really wants to be *selfish*?

Being called selfish is hurtful. It implies that you’re too demanding,

inconsiderate of others’ needs. That you fail to put your
family/friends/partner/colleagues first. It states that you’re taking up too
much space.

We’re told by our parents, our friends, our teachers, our colleagues and
society that we must be unselfish. Put others first. Think of others at all
times. Care for others before ourselves. Be selfless.

But what if doing that is a cause of resentment, burnout, frustration,

family disharmony, and a lack of fulfilment?

What if there’s another way to look at selfish? What if we turn this trait on
its head and look at it as a way to fill our lives rather than to empty our
bodies and souls at other people’s altars?

I think the word needs a rebrand. So, f**k it, I’m claiming it as my own.

Allow me to explain . . .

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INTRODUCTION

This book starts with – of all things – a man and some hot chocolate.

The man is my man. My partner in life, the father of my children.

He’s a kind, lovely and generous person. I was caught in a fire over a
decade ago and burned really badly to 65 per cent of my body. He
selflessly took care of me, changed the bandages on my wounds, fed me
soup, drove me to appointments and then supported me in every single
one of my endeavours. Right now, he’s sitting on the couch while he talks
to his mate on the phone.

Text 6 –

'I like people quite well

at a little distance.
I like to see them passing and passing
and going their own way,
especially if their aloneness is alive in them.
Yet I don't want them to come near.
If they will only leave me alone
I can still have the illusion that there is room enough in the world.'

Text 7-

FROM THE DESK OF WEDNESDAY ADDAMS

Ask any problem child how they feel about being dumped at their eighth
school in five years and you’ll get about the same answer. I’m no
exception, though I like to think my expulsions (as well as my taste in
curses) tend to be a bit more creative than your average bully’s.

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I can’t overstate how little I wanted to be dragged to Nevermore Academy
(my parents’ alma mater) on the fateful fall day that our family hearse
wound up the drive. In my eyes, any institution that could produce my
mother’s smug superiority or my parents’ nauseating obsession with each
other was a place to be avoided at all costs.

But as any investigative genius will tell you, it’s important to be able to
admit when you’re wrong. And I was. About Nevermore Academy. About
almost everything that happened there that year. In my defense,
however, who could possibly have predicted that a campus notorious for
housing your garden-variety outsiders and weirdos would play host to a
monster mystery so deep, so twisted, that even I would be surprised by
its conclusion?

If I could go back in time and tell that younger, more naive version of me
one thing — well, I probably wouldn’t. Pure, unforeshadowed terror is one
of life’s few true diversions, after all, and I know she’d be furious with me
for ruining the surprise. Instead, let me take you back to the beginning of
a story in which I, Wednesday Addams, fin a purpose and a home in the
very last place I ever expected to find either. Don’t worry, it’s not a feel-
good story. If you should know one thing about me going into this, it’s that
I detest a story without at least five brutal murders.

Text 8-

Mushroom Soup Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need to make this mushroom soup recipe:

 Mushrooms, of course! No need to splurge on fancy mushrooms.

A mix of white button mushrooms and cremini mushrooms gives
this soup a fantastic texture and flavor.
 Onion and garlic – They add savory depth of flavor.
 Extra-virgin olive oil and butter – For sautéing the onions and
mushrooms. You could use just one or the other, but I love the

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 combination of oil and butter here. The butter adds a rich, buttery
flavor. The olive oil adds lighter, fruitier notes.
 Dry white wine – It adds delicious acidity to the soup.
 Tamari – Or soy sauce! I love to use these ingredients when I cook
mushrooms. They bring out the mushrooms’ umami flavor.
 Fresh thyme and parsley – The thyme adds woodsy, earthy
flavor. I use the parsley for garnish. It offers a nice fresh contrast to
the rich soup!
 Vegetable broth – Make homemade vegetable stock or use
store-bought.
 Heavy cream or creme fraîche – These ingredients are totally
optional. I love this soup without them, but if you’re craving a more
classic cream of mushroom soup, I recommend adding one for
extra richness.
 And salt and pepper – To make all the flavors pop!

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