Content:
Part I | Principles
1. The Transaction
2. Simplicity
3. Clutter (Writing clean English Sentence)
4. Style (Preserving your identity)
5. The audience (Who am I writing for)
6. Words (The only tools you’ve got)
7. Usage (What is good usage)
Part II | Methods
8. Unity (Anchor of good writing)
9. The lead and the ending
10. Bits and pieces
Part II | Forms
11. Nonfiction as Literature
12. Writing About People: The Interview
13. Writing About Places: The travel article
....
Words and Expressions:
1. Nowhere else in nonfiction do writers use such syrupy words and groaning platitudes.
.N-COUNT 陈词滥调；套话
A platitude is a statement which is considered meaningless and boring because it has been made many times before in similar situations.
【语用信息】：disapproval
【例句】
Why couldn't he say something original instead of spouting the same old platitudes?
他为什么就不能讲些有新意的话，而不是喋喋不休地说些老生常谈呢？
...a stream of platitudes, outlining many problems but offering few solutions.
概述了很多问题、但几乎没有提出解决办法的一串陈词滥调
2. It’s a world where inanimate objects spring to life
inanimate 也可以指看起来像dead 一样的事物，比如冬眠中的熊。A bear in hibernation may appear inanimate due to its decreased heart rate, but don’t be fooled — it’s very much alive.
ADJ 无生命的
An inanimate object is one that has no life.
【例句】
He thought of the baby almost as aninanimateobject.
他认为婴儿几乎就是毫无生命的物体。
3. In Europe you awake to the clip-clop of horse-drawn wagons along a history-haunted river.
"awake to sth" 是固定短语，表示 to become aware of sth and its possible effects or results
【例句】It took her some time to awake to the dangers of her situation.
4. McPhee distills its essence in a paragraph that is adroit both in detail and in metaphor
.ADJ-GRADED 机敏的；聪明的；精干的
Someone who is adroit is quick and skilful in their thoughts, behaviour, or actions.
She is a remarkablyadroitand determined politician.
她是一位异常精明果断的政治家。
adroitly adv.
He drove adroitly.
他车技娴熟。
adroitness n.
He governed with anadroitness that gained him the nickname 'the old fox'.
他因管理有方而为自己赢得了“老狐狸”的绰号。
5. The case of Lucille Marie Maxwell Miller is a tabloid monument to the new style.
tabloid 通常会报道一些名人八卦或者犯罪故事，首页也往往是大幅的照片。
N-COUNT (版面小、文章短、图片多的)通俗小报
A tabloid is a newspaper that has small pages, short articles, and lots of photographs. Tabloids are often considered to be less serious than other newspapers.
'The Britishtabloids called me leggy and stunning,' she recalls.
“当时的英国小报都说我‘双腿修长’、‘艳惊四座’，”她回忆道。
6. Upon taking the job he reversed a bureaucratic fiat prohibiting children under 45 inches tall from visiting the Arizona Memorial.
fiat 可不仅仅表示意大利的汽车品牌菲亚特，还有更广泛的含义:命令，指令。
N-COUNT 命令;指令
If something is done by fiat, it is done because of an official order given by someone in authority.
【搭配模式】：alsobyN
【语域标签】：FORMAL 正式
He has tried to impose solutions to the country's problems byfiat.
他试图下令强行解决该国的问题。
Thoughts:
这章的主旨是， "People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built. Every human event happens somewhere, and the reader wants to know what that somewhere was like."
Writing for places就是to give texture to the story you’re telling.
zinser给的这几个例子，吸引人的地方在于，第一，个性鲜明有新意；第二，加入了人的因素。
回忆一下上一章伦敦拍卖行的例子，如果是这样的一段描写：
“Sotheby's is the world’s fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation, with 90 locations in 40 countries. As of December 2011, the company had 1,446 employees worldwide. It is the world's largest art business with global sales in 2011 totalling $5.8 billion.”
和下面这样的描述：
““We just sit here like Micawber waiting for things to come in,” said R. S. Timewell, head of the furniture department. “Recently an old lady near Cambridge wrote that she wanted to raise two thousand pounds and asked if I would go through her house and see if her furniture would fetch that much. I did, and there was absolutely nothing of value. As I was about to leave I said, ‘Have I seen everything?’ She said I had, except for a maid’s room that she hadn’t bothered to show me. The room had a very fine 18th-century chest that the old lady was using to store blankets in. ‘Your worries are over,’ I told her, ‘if you sell that chest.’ She said, ‘But that’s quite impossible—where will I store my blankets?’””
哪一个会让你印象深刻？
看完第二个，你会不会觉得Sotheby's是一个有趣的地方，因为那里有有趣的人，发生了有趣的事。你会不会有去参观Sotheby's的冲动。
本章描述土耳其的例子也是如此，作者并没有描述伊斯坦布尔的风光如何，仅仅通过写 "One realizes there are two breeds in Turkey: those who carry and those who sit", 就让读者对这个地方有了直观印象，并且忍俊不禁。
为什么呢？
因为引入了“人”， a story of place 变成了a story of people。
换句话说， “what brings a place alive is human activity: people doing the things that give a locale its character.”
所以下次写place的时候，不妨试试吧。
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