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分享一个知识点： Reader question: Please explain “sugar coating it” in this sentence: Thanks for an honest report and not sugar coating it. My comments: First, sugar coating. When you get ill and take medicine, you’ll notice that many pills taste sweet. Medicines should taste bitter, right? Right, and that’s why pills taste sweet – drug companies since who knows when have been putting a thin layer of sugar over the pills to sweeten our pill-taking experience. In other words, they’ve been sugar coating the pill – like, putting a coat (of sugar) over it. That’s sugar coating a pill, alright, but the question here is: Can one sugar coat a report? Well, for instance, if the local basketball team lost a match by 48 to 89, i.e. by a big margin. For the local reporter to report it as a rout (big loss) would be telling it as it is. It’s a debacle as a matter of fact, quite an embarrassment if you’re a fan. However, if your local reporter keep going on about things like both teams played hard, the home team learned a lot, young players gained experience and they lost to a much better team, that’s sugar coating it, trying to make the loss appear easier to take. Hence in the above example, when a reporter makes “an honest report and not sugar coating it”, he’s thanked – for telling a straight story instead of twisting and turning a harsh reality into something pleasant and even appealing. | 
