That book is awesome.

Like the other people have said, it’s a metaphor, comparing the smoke to a knot/snake without using “like” or “as”.

It IS NOT a personification. Personification is giving human characteristics to a non-human subject. Last time I checked humans couldn’t coil.

The second example is definitely correct. The first sounds like a bad translation of something from Chinese to English done by somebody using a dictionary rather than using their knowledge of the written language. Being used…might be a grammatically correct sentence, but I really don’t know for sure. You could say, If used incorrectly or When used incorrectly or If you don’t use it correctly. When I looked online, I found a yahoo answer that said being is a passive way to start a sentence and you’d have more impact by rewriting it in any of the ways above or ones other people suggest.

i would say there’s a metaphor in comparing the smoke to a tight knot as well as personficiaton since the smoke is uncoiling slowly

metaphor. It’s comparing the smoke to a tight knot without using “like” or “as.”

That is a metaphor, a comparison that does not use like or as, as in a simile. The author is comparing smoke and a knot.

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Cheers,

Bruce

It is imagery…and you could also argue that it is personification because it is saying that the smoke is “uncoiling” like a snake etc.

i dont know sorry ={{{{{