Words and Expressions (Chapter1-9)
Chapter 1&2 (The Transaction and Simplicity)
Coming home from anarduousday at the hospotial,...
1 arduous adj.difficult and tiring
adj. 困难的，费力的
He was going to talk about writing as an avocation.
2 avocation n.a job or activity that you do because you are interested in it, rather than to earn your living.
n. 副业
...all eager to learn the secrets of our glamourous work.
3 glamorous adj.more attractive, exciting or interesting
adj. 富有魅力的
...until they have fiddled endlessly with the first.
4 fiddle v.with n. change something in minor ways
fiddle with 摆弄， 拨弄
...wrote a letter to mollify the alumni after a spell of campus unrest.
5 mollify v.do or say something to make them less upset or angry
v. 平复，平息
Faced with such obstacles, readers are at first tenacious.
6 tenacious adj. determinded, not give up easily
adj. 有决心的，顽强的
Chapter 3&4 (Clutter and Style)
Verbalcamouflagereached new heights...
1 camouflage
n. 伪装;掩饰;〈喻〉幌子 vt.& vi. 伪装;掩饰;欺瞒
So much for early warnings about the bloated monsters that lie inambush...
2 ambush
n. 伏击;埋伏 vt. 伏击
If your verbs are weak and your syntax isrickety, your sentences will fall apart.
3 rickety
adj. 连接处不牢固的，快要散架的
gaudysimiles
tinseledadjectives
Not only are those first paragraphs impersonal andornate;...
4 这三个形容词gaudy,tinseled,ornate都是表示“花哨的”，“华而不实的”，“绚丽的”.，作者强调语言的准确，恰当而不是为了看上去好看去用一些华而不实的辞藻。
“I” can be a self-indulgence and acop-out.
5 cop-out<俚语> 逃避的方法；（不做事的）借口
文中表示作者意识到在很多领域的文体中“I”是不允许出现的像学术论文，新闻报道等。用第一人称有失偏颇不够客观，老师不愿意让学生在论文中用“I”是不想让他们用“aneasy escape” 来阐述观点。
Chapter 5&6 (The Audience and Words)
...there's no excuse for losing readers throughsloppyworkmanship.
Sloppyediting is common in newspapers,...
1 sloppy
adj.草率的，懒散的
这两章都出现了这个单词，作者表达的是你的作品不可以用一种（careless and lazy way）去完成。
...he was writing for himself anddidn't give a damnwhat the reader might think.
2 damn这个词我本来只知道作动词表达诅咒。"damn it!" 是我们最常见的。
但是查了柯林斯字典后didn't give a damn就是表达didn't care about it at all，再去联系上下文含义就非常清楚了。
...he didn'tkowtowto the reader orcurry anyone's favor.
3 这里的kowtow应该就是从汉语的广东话“叩头”来的，表示唯命是从。curry做名词是咖哩的意思，不过在这里curry作为动词，意思是讨好，奉承。而curry favor, 实际上就是拍马屁，迎合某人。我应该只能想到cater for。
Chapter 7&8 (Usage and Unity)
...I'm mucking about in the argot of the youth culture and really know better.
1 muckv.污泥
muck about/ around: 游手好闲， 鬼混 （to behave in a silly way）
...ought to warn off anyone who doesn't want to be prissy, horrible or genteel.
2 genteel adj.有教养的
这里的genteel正好和后面的tacky（缺乏教养的）作为反义词以及cultivated（有教养的）形成近义词。
It's a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it's true.
3 turismn.老生常谈
...,however backwardly they may be assembled, or it will soon come tumbling down.
4 tumble down坍塌 （collapse）
Chapter 9 (The Lead and the Ending)
If it doesn'tinducethe reader to proceed the second sentence, your article is dead.
1 inducev.引诱和后面出现的“lure” 表达的是一个意思。
,...so there isn't much time for the writer tofool around.
2 fool around 鬼混这让我一下子想到昨天第七章里的“muck about/around”也是表达作者在写文章时不要浪费时间东拉西扯，写一些和主题无关，没有意义的东西。
I sat in a grandstand seat brought from the Polo Grounds, ..., anddutifullycopied all the labels and captions that might be useful.
3 dutifullyadv.忠诚地， 这和后面“...we wouldfaithfullytrudge,...”中的“faithfully”是近义词。
，...which staked out the road we would faithfully trudge, and its subnumerals (IIa and IIb) denoting lesser paths down which we would brifely poke.
4 stake out和denote在这里都是表达“明确指示”， 文章指的是我们学习写作的时候用罗马数字（I，II，III...）直接指明接下去的内容，这就不存在用什么好的句子去吸引读者读下去。
skills
通过这几章的阅读， 对写作在一定程度上有了新的认知。在写作技能方面，Unity（统一性）对我来说是非常受用的。我不管在中文写作还是英文写作当中很容易写出“我们应该注意文章的统一性，所以你应该在人称， 时态，语态方面注意。”这样的句子。从小到大的写作，学校老师似乎从来没有把这个作为重点讲，我印象中也鲜有老师指出我这个问题。我在写下面这个summary的时候时刻提醒着自己不要犯这个错误。另外时态问题，不是说一篇文章只能用一种时态，比如将来时可以用“will+do" 来表达， 也可以用进行时表将来但是只选择一种表示将来时的方式， 以前认为写作中用几种方式来表示一个时态可以显得自己文章不单调。其实这很容易把读者搞糊涂。还要就是文章的语调问题， 通过书中夫妇去香港旅游的例子，作者想要告诉大家，如果是写香港旅游的游记，那全文的基调应该就是以“我”去感受，去经历的事情或故事。不能写到后面变成旅行指南一本正经的，或者说教科书式的来介绍香港。这个确实也是我值得注意的地方，我经常出去旅游，我虽然不会去写游记但是发朋友圈的话文字是选择用幽默，调侃的方式去介绍这个人文，美食， 景点还是一本正经的发说明性的文字还是要考虑一下的，因为把他们混在一起，会给人一种“你到底想要表达什么啊？”的感觉。
Summary
A piece of writing is aimed to express one subject clearly. The audience comprises the writer and readers. So we can write anything or hold any opinions we want but don't mock around pointless things, neglect unity( pronoun, tense and mood) or keep sloppy language which may confuse our readers or let them lose interests. In order to capture readers immediately, we need a good lead( freshness, or novelty, or paradox, or humor, or surprise, or with an unusual idea, or an interesting fact, or a question) as long as it induces readers to proceed to the rest. Also, we should give as much thought to the ending as the lead because the perfect ending should take readers by surprise and yet seem exactly right.
网友评论