凝聚力
Highlights from Chapter 3 <<Style – Toward Clarity and Grace>> by Joseph Williams
1.
There is more to readable writing than local clarity. A series of clear sentences can still be confusing if we fail to design them to fit their context, to reflect a consistent point of view, to emphasize our most important ideas.
2.
Two complementary principles of cohesion:
1): Put at the beginning of a sentence those ideas that you have already mentioned, referred to, or implied, or concepts that you can reasonably assume your reader is already familiar with, and will readily recognize.
2): Put at the end of your sentence the newest, the most surprising, the most significant information: information that you want to stress-perhaps the information that you will expand on in your next sentence.
3.
Each sentence should teach your reader something new. To lead your reader to whatever will seem new to that reader, you have to begin that sentence with something that you can reasonably assume that reader already knows.
4.
Beginning Well
It’s harder to begin a sentence well than to end it well.
Every time we begin a sentence, we have to juggle three or four elements that typically occur early on.
1) To connect a sentence to the preceding one, we use transitional metadiscourse, such as and, but, therefore, as a result, therefore.
2) To help readers evaluate what follows, we use expressions such as fortunately, perhaps, allegedly, it is important to note, for the most part, under these circumstances, from a practical point of view, politically speaking.
3) We locate the action in time and place: then, later, on May 23, in Europe.
4) And most important (note the evaluation), we announce at the beginning of a sentence its topic and the concept that we intend to say something about. We ordinarily name the topic of a sentence or clause in its subject.
5.
In the clearest writing, the topics of most sentences and clauses are their grammatical subjects. But what’s more important than their grammatical function is the way topics control how readers read sentences, not individually, but in sequences, and the way that writers must therefore organize sequences
of those topics.
6. The Role of Topics
1) When you design your sentences so that their subjects predictably name your central characters real or abstract and the verbs in those sentences name crucial actions, you are beginning your sentences from a point of view your readers will feel is consistent, from the point of view of your characters, the most familiar units of information in any story you tell.
2) The secret to a clear and readable style is in the first five or six words of every sentence. At the beginning of every sentence, locate your reader in familiar territory; at the beginning of a series of sentences, create for your reader a reasonably consistent point of view, a consistent topic string.
7. Managing Subjects and Topics for Flow
1) Passives again. An important role of the passive is to let us replace a long subject full of new information with a short one that locates the reader in the context of something more familiar:
During the first years of our nation, its administration was conducted by a series of brilliant and virtuous presidents committed to a democratic republic yet confident in their own superior worth.
2) Subject-complement switching.
Sometimes, we simply switch the subject and complement, especially when what follows the linking verb “be” refers to something already mentioned:
Ex: More interesting [than something already mentioned] is the source of the American attitude toward rural dialects.
3) Subject-Clause Transformations.
If you have a very long subject that does not allow you simply to switch it to the end of the clause, you can occasionally turn it into an introductory clause, allowing you to construct two shorter topics.
8. Two Principles
1) Put in the subject/topic of your sentences ideas that you have already mentioned, or ideas that are so familiar to your reader that if you state them at the beginning of a sentence, you will not surprise anyone.
2) Among groups of related sentences, keep their topics consistent, if you can. They don’t have to be identical, but they
should constitute a string that your readers will take to be
focused.
9. Summing Up
1) Use the beginning of your sentences to refer to what you have already mentioned or knowledge that you can assume you and your reader readily share.
2) Choose topics that will control your reader’s point of view. This will depend on how creatively you can use verbs to make one or another of your characters the seeming agent of an action.
3) Organize your sentences so that you open them with old information in the topic position, usually with a character as a subject. Then follow the subject with a verb that expresses a crucial action. Move complex information to the end of your sentence. Then be certain that your string of topics is consistent and appropriate.