The Sound of Your voice.

WORDS

1.Commodity

My commodity as a writer, whatever I’m writing about, is me. And your commodity is you.

Something or someone that is useful and valued.稀缺品，有价值的物品

Eg. Patience is a rare commodity.

an actor who is a hot commodity [=who is very popular] in Hollywood right now

仿写：At this time, precise writing is a commodity.

2.Nail

The nails of grammar and syntax(句法规则） are in place and the English is as good as the writer can make it.

这里的nail应该是个metaphor,将语法和句法规则“钉”在正确的位置上，精准，牢固。

关于nail之前学到过：nail sth down 意思是弄清，确认。

扩展：

If you describe someone hit the nail on the head, you think they said the exact right thing.

I think it would civilize people a bit more if they had decent conditions.' — 'I think you've hit the nail on the head.'

“我认为，如果人们有良好的环境，就会更有教养一点。”——“我想你说到点子上了。”

3.tumble out

The sentence is so folksy that we imagine ourselves sitting on the porch of White’s house in Maine. White is in a rocking chair, puffing on a pipe, and the words just tumble out in his storyteller’s voice.

脱口而出

Sophie didn't know why she said it; the words just tumbled out of her mouth: "So was Socrates."

苏菲也不知道自己是怎么回事，脱口就说："苏格拉底也是这样啊!"

as well as numbed by the sheer volume of Dublin-tinctured words that tumbled out of him—you might learn many dozens of mind-bogglingly arcane facts.

谈定地听着他都柏林味十足的口音在那里滔滔不绝——你也许能得知很多神秘的事实，开阔了眼界。

4.labor

There’s no need to labor all the reasons why this stuff is so terrible.It’s crude（粗略的）.It’s corny(老生常谈的）. It’s verbose. （冗长的）

to repeat or stress something too much or too often详细分析（贬义）

Eg.She has a tendency to labor the obvious.

I don't want to labor [=belabor] the point, but I think I should mention again that we are running out of time.

labor under a delusion/misapprehension/misconception

If you continue to believe something that is not true, you are laboring under a delusion/misapprehension/misconception.

He still labors under the delusion that other people value his opinion.

仿写：Professor Kendler said that we do not have to labor the answer that the respondents give us too much because we just have meager time.

5.Kitsch/deride

one person’s beautiful object is somebody else’s kitsch. Taste can also change from one decade to another—yesterday’s charm is derided today as junk.

If you describe a work as kitsch,you mean it is gaudy and has a bad taste.

If you deride someone or something, you say that they are stupid or have no value. [V n] [Formal]

Opposition MPs derided the Government's response to the crisis...

反对党议员嘲弄政府针对危机作出的反应。

仿写：The populace deride his work as kitsch.

6.Roundabout

Sometimes you will tap a vein of eloquence or racial memory that gives your writing a depth it could never attain on its own. Let me illustrate what I mean by a roundabout route.

If you do or say something in a roundabout way, you do not do or say it in a simple, clear, and direct way. [usu ADJ n]

We made a bit of a fuss in a roundabout way.

我们拐弯抹角地发了点牢骚。

仿写：She always likes to talk in a roundabout way.

复习：

weather

So I studied Governor Cross’s words to see how they had weathered the passage of time.

风化，腐蚀，褪色

Unpainted wooden furniture weathers to a grey colour...

没有上漆的木制家具会褪成灰色。

替换：fade

REFLECTION

  In the previous section,Zinser suggests us not kowtowing to the readers but doing yourself.In this chapter,he says that we should do ourselves but don’t be strung along by the subjects that we want to write,such as sports and music.He thinks there is only one kind of English that is the good English.But how to achieve this?

  Firstly,we should avoid the breezy style and don’t be condescending.In order to behave casually,some writers might intend to use the cheap slang,shoddy sentences and windy philosophizing.But the truth is that it is much harder to read than the good English.

  But what is exactly the good English?It’s all about the taste.Zinser make an excellent metapher.He takes the taste of clothes as example.As we all know,we can only abtain the taste of colthes until we see a lot of the good styles and distill the essence of them.And so does the taste of a good writing.Learning from the masterpieces of good writers is a shortcut to achieve this.And finally we will find that a good writing taste always contains simplisity,rythem and using of after verbs and plain nouns and so on.