Formal Literary Style

[Alexander M.]

Can anyone help me with this question: I can't find any style guide or grammatical guide for the register of Chinese used, for example, in official communications, legal documents, and in formal prose. When I try reading something like Mingbao Yuekan, I think I'm looking at a more formal language than ordinary baihua. Whenever I use the term 'literary' to search for a style guide to this sort of formal writing, I only ever get directed to websites or other resources that deal with wenyan or guwen. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[semantic nuance]

Don't quite get what you want, but you may try to google 公文 to see if that is what you want.

Here's a 公文範例 for you. Better if you can post part of what you referred in 明報月刊.

Hope it helps!

[Hofmann]

He's talking about what is commonly called 書面語.

...such a gaudy language.

[gato]

Try these books:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/9379-book-on-formal-chinese-writing/

A Learners' Handbook of Modern Chinese Written Expressions

by Yu Feng

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/11393

“汉语书面用语初编: Expressions of Written Chinese” published by 北京语言大学出版社