第一次使用简书，让我来测试一下，借这次测试机会也来发一篇文章吧。

本篇文章主要来自于美国大文豪Kurt Vonnegut的“如何写作有风格”。

如何有风格地写作的8条建议

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文章梗概如下：

一. 前言：为什么写作要有自己风格格？

二. 风格写作的8条件建议

1. 找到你关心的话题

2.不要长篇大论

3.简单一点

4.有勇气舍弃

5.用你自己的语言写作

6.说你想说的话

7.同情读者

8.更具体的建议

三.我的感想

正文

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一.前言

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writing. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

新闻记者和科学作家在被训练写作的时候，在他们的文章里，几乎不允许出现和他们相关的东西。在其他作者写作时都会透露许多和作者相关的事情时，这让那些人在作者的圈子里就是一群怪人。我们把这些无意的或有意的透露，称为风格的元素。

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful–? And on and on.

这些透露告诉我们读者，我们与之相处的作者是怎样的人。作者是无知呢还是知识渊博，愚蠢呢还是聪明，狡猾呢还是真诚，严肃呢还是活泼？等等......

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your reader will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.

为什么你要用提升你的写作风格来检查它呢？无论你写什么，这样做是尊重你的读者的标志。如果你将你的想法用任何方式马马虎虎的写出来，那么你的读者能感受到，你一点也不关心他们。他们会给你贴上自负的疯子和蠢才的标签，更糟糕的是，他们不会再阅读你的作品了。

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show or make you think about? Did you ever admire an empty-headed writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

关于你自己最重要的透露，可以是你不知道什么有趣什么没趣。你会因为作者选择展示或者让你思考的东西，而喜欢或者不喜欢那个作者吗？你会崇拜一个没有思想但是语言功力深厚的作者吗？不！

所以，拥有写作风格必须从拥有思想开始。

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二.写作风格的8条建议

1.Find a Subject You Care About（找到你关心的话题）

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

找到一个你关心的并且你内心里觉得别人也关心的话题。正是这种真诚的关心，而不是语言游戏，才会变成你的风格里最有力、最吸引人的元素。

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

我并不是鼓励你写小说，但是如果你写一篇，有你最关心的话题，我也不会反对的。一封给市长的关于门前坑洞的请愿书或者给邻家女孩的情书都可以。

2.Do Not Ramble, Though（不要长篇大论）

I won’t ramble on about that.

我也不会长篇大论的。

3.Keep It Simple（简单一点）

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. ‘To be or not to be?’ asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story ‘Eveline’ is just this one: ‘She was tired.’ At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

在你使用语言的时候，记住两个语言大师：William Shakespeare and James Joyce，他们写出来孩子都能懂得语言但是却意义非凡。例如莎士比亚的哈姆雷特问：'To be or not to be?’ 最长的词语就三个字母。Joyce，当他兴致勃勃的时候，可以写出像Cleopatra的项链那样精美复杂的句子，但是我最喜欢的句子，在他的短篇故事在'Eveline'里，还是'She was tired'，在故事里，没有其它任何语句能想这句一样，让读者心碎的了。

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and earth.’

简洁的语言不仅是受尊敬的也是神圣的。圣经一个14岁孩子都能写出的句子开篇：‘In the beginning God created the heaven and earth.’最初的时候，上帝创造了天堂和大地。

4.Have the Guts to Cut（有削减的勇气）

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

可以这样说，给Cleopatra做项链的那个人，可能是你。但是你的优雅应该你的思想服务。你的原则是这样的：一个句子，无论多么精彩，如果不能表达清楚你的想法，都应该把它删了。

5.Sound like Yourself（用自己的语言）

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

写作风格是那些对你来说很自然的话语，那些话语是你小时候回响在你脑海里的话。英语是小说家Joseph Conrad的第三语言，的英语无疑是受到他的母语（波兰语）影响的。他是一个很幸运的作家，在爱尔兰长大的他，那里的语言是那么迷人和悦耳。我在印第安纳波利斯长大的，哪里语言听起来就像锯子在切割镀锌的罐子，使用的词汇就是活动扳手一样不加修饰。

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

我相信我的作品，其他人似乎也相信。当我听起来想一个来自于印第安纳波利斯的人，那就是我。我有什么选择？无疑在你身上常发生的，也最常被老师推荐的是：像一个世纪前的被培养的英语人那样写作。

6.Say What You Mean to Say（说你要说的话）

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable — and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledly-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

我过去常常被我的老师激怒，但现在不会了。我明白那些古老的文章和故事，和我的文章比较，它们的伟大不在于它们的日期或者独特性，而在于它们准确的表达出了作者的观点。我的老师希望我准确地写作，始终选择最有效的词语，和那些清楚的，死板的像机器的一部分的词。老师根本不想把我变成那些古老的英语人。曾经我梦想对词语所做的事情就像毕加索对他的画和爵士大家对他们的音乐所做的事。如果我打破了拼写规则，让词语我想什么意思就什么意思，随意组合词语，那我是不会简单地被人理解的。所以，如果你有值得说的东西且渴望被理解，你最好避免毕加索和爵士风格的写作。

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

读者想让你的书页看起来像他们之前读过的，为什么？因为他们有艰苦的工作，他们需要所有能从你拿获得的帮助。

7.Pity the Readers（同情读者）

Readers have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school — twelve long years.

读者需要弄浏览上无数的符号，并且迅速理解。他们必须要阅读，艺术是很难的，大多数人即使经过了初中、高中，12年的学习仍然没有掌握。

So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify, whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

所以这个讨论是我们承认我们的风格选择不多也不是高高在上的，因为我们的读者是这样的不完美的艺术家。我们的读者需要我们是感同身受且耐心的老师，要简单明了，而不是高高在上，像一只夜莺在歌唱。

That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.

这是个坏消息，好消息是美国有一个特殊的国会，允许我们自由书写而不担心惩罚。所以我们的风格最有意思的方面是，我们的书写内容选择是无限的。

8.For Really Detailed Advice（真正具体的建议）

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, a more technical sense, I commend to your attention The Elements of Style, by Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White. E. B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.

想要自由的风格，我推荐关注《The Elements of Style》。作者是Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White。Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White是这个世纪来最受人尊敬的自由风格主义者。

You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.

你也发现了，如果white先生没有任何吸引人的东西可写的话，没有人会在意他写的好还是不好的。

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三.我的感想

翻译这篇文章的时间远比我想象的长多了，原以为一个小时可以搞定的事情，结果却多了倍。

读第一遍文章的时候，我其实不太懂这篇文章的意思，还曾质疑过作者的观点，但是复听了John的关于这篇文章的解读之后，原来的疑问清楚多了，自己翻译下来也顺畅了许多。

许久之前，我就知道写作的目的是为读者写作，读者花了时间读我的文章必须让他们有所收获。所以写作的话题，必须是自己关心的且坚信的。其次在写作语言上，写作清楚尽量做到没有歧义是非常重要的。让自己的观点清晰无歧义表达，这句话看似简单，其实做起来不容易。最后是风格写作，其实是建立自己有东西可写，有思想有内容的基础上。而要有这个基础除了多写之外，还要多看、多想。