旅游营销特别想念一个人的诗句The qualities of good writing
Jacqueline Berke
Even before you t out, you come prepared by instinct and intuition to make certain judgments about what is “good”. Take the following familiar ntence, for example: “I know not what cour others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.” Do you suppo this thought of Patrick Henry’s would have come ringing down through the centuries if he had expresd this ntiment not in one tight, rhythmicalntence but as follows:
It would be difficult, if not impossible, to predict on the basis of my limited information as to the predilections of the public, what the citizenry at large will regard as action commensurate with the prent provocation, but after arduous consideration I personally feel so intenly and irrevocably committed to the position of social, political, and economic independence, that rather than submit to foreign and despotic control which is anathema to me, I will make the ultimate sacrifice of which humanity is capable—under the aegis of pers
onal honor, ideological conviction, and existential commitment, I will sacrifice my own mortal existence
How does this rambling, "high-flown” paraphra measure up to the bold "Give me liberty or give me death"? Who will deny that something is "happening" in Patrick Henry's rousing challenge that not only fails to happen in the paraphra but is actually negated there? Would you bear with this long-winded, pompous speaker to the end? If you were to judge this statement strictly on its rhetoric (its choice and arrangement of words), you might aptly call it more boring than bravel. Perhaps a plainer version will work better:
Liberty is a very important thing for a person to have. Most people—at least the people I've talked to or that other people have told me about—know this and therefore are very anxious to prerve their liberty. Of cour I can't be absolutely sure about what other folks are going to do in this prent crisis, what with all the threats and everything, but I've made up my mind that I'm going to fight becau liberty is really a very important thing to me; at least that's the way I feel about it.
This flat, "homely” pro, weighted down with what Flaubert called "fatty deposits" is grammatical enough. As in the pompous paraphra, every verb agrees with its subject, every comma is in its proper place; nonetheless it lacks the qualities that make a statement—of one ntence or one hundred pages—pungent, vital, moving, memorable.
Let us isolate the qualities and describe them briefly. ... The first quality of good writing is economy. In an appropriately slender volume entitled The Elements of Style, authors William Strunk and E. B. White stated concily the ca for economy: "A ntence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary ntences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his ntences short or that he avoid all detail ... but that every word tell." In other words, economical writing is efficient and 运动标语aesthetically土木工程毕业论文 satisfying. While it makes a minimum demand on the energy and patience of readers, it returns to them a maximum of sharply compresd meaning. You should accept this as your basic responsibility as a writer: that you inflict no unnecessary words on your readers—just as a dentist inflicts no unnecessary pain, a law
键盘怎么拆yer no unnecessary risk. Economical writing avoids strain and at the same time promotes pleasure by producing a n of form and right proportion, a n of words that fit the ideas that they embody—with not a line of "deadwood” to dull the reader's attention, not an extra, uless phra to clog the free flow of ideas, one following swiftly and clearly upon another.
Another basic quality of good writing is simplicity. Here again this does not require that you make all your ntences primerlike or that you reduce complexities to bare bone, but rather that you avoid embellishment or embroidery. The natural, unpretentious style is best. But, paradoxically, simplicity or naturalness does not come naturally. By the time we are old enough to write, most of us have grown so lf-conscious that we stiffen, sometimes to the point of rigidity, when we are called upon to make a statement in speech or in writing. It is easy to offer the kindly advice “Be yourlf," but many people do not feel like themlves when they take a pencil in hand or sit down at a typewriter. Thus during the early days of the Second World War, when air raids were feared in New York City and blackouts were instituted, an anonymous writer—probably a young civil rvice
worker at City Hall—produced and distributed to stores throughout the city the following poster:
小儿清热宁
Illumination
is Required
to be
香芋怎么做好吃
Extinguished
on The Premis
After Nightfall
车辆管理办法What this meant, of cour, was simply "Lights Out After Dark"; but apparently that direct imperative—clear and to the point—did not sound "official" enough; so the writer resorted to long Latinate words and involved syntax (note the awkward passives " is Required" and "to be Extinguished") to establish a tone of dignity and authority. In contrast, how bea
utifully simple are the words of the translators of the King James Version of the Bible, who felt no need for flourish, flamboyance, or grandiloquence. The Lord did not loftily or bombastically proclaim that universal illumination was required to be instantaneously installed. Simply but majestically "God said, let there be light: and there was light. ... And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
