语言与文风2016foxtype.com
一个帮你把文章写得更简洁的语言学工具
A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing
导读
这篇介绍 Foxtype 的写作简化工具，评论者从工作流适配和对奥威尔文本的实测出发，讨论这类语言学工具能帮什么、会误伤什么。对写作者来说，值得读的是：简化建议应服务于表达，而不是让工具替你做判断。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
把简化工具当“提示器”而不是裁判，逐条判断删改是否损失信息、细节或强调。
- 02
写作工具应嵌入现有流程；若必须换编辑器、破坏 Markdown/HTML，使用成本往往大于收益。
- 03
长句、被动语态、长名词短语并非天然坏，短句堆叠也可能节奏不自然，要结合语境判断。
- 04
用经典文本或自己领域的文本测试工具的误报，建立自己的修改清单而非盲从高亮。
HN 评论精选
写作工具必须融入现有工作流，否则价值不足以让用户改变习惯。
理论上这是好主意，但我见过的实现都不适合我。我不会用要求我改变整个工作流程的写作工具；这类工具都要我用它们的编辑器，比如想改 HN 上的一条评论就得复制粘贴。更严重的是，这些编辑器除了简化功能外支持很差：HTML 会坏，Markdown 会坏，也不能好好做 WYSIWYG。我不是苛责工具，语言处理很难，它们做得不错；对写得更认真、能先写再换编辑器排版的人也有用。但对我来说，不能集成进工作流就太麻烦，提供的价值不足以让我改变流程。
kerkeslager查看英文原文
In theory this is a great idea, but not a single implementation I've seen fits my needs. I'm not going to use a writing tool that requires me to change my entire workflow. This (and every other tool I've seen that does something similar[1]) requires me to use their editor. If I want to do something like edit a comment on HN, it requires copy/paste to do that. More crippling than that, these editors don't support anything besides the writing simplification features. HTML breaks it, markdown breaks it, and it can't do WYSIWYG (Hemingway does this last, but not well). I don't mean to criticize the tools too harshly: linguistic processing of any kind is hard and they do a good job at that. I can certainly see how this would be useful for someone who writes more seriously than I do and can take the time to write first and mark up or format in a different editor later. And the effort to make it something I would use is large. I would probably want a browser plugin that watched my text areas and handled markdown, and a vim plugin. :) But for me, not having integration with my workflow makes it too complicated to use and the value it provides isn't large enough for me to change my workflow. [1] http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
用奥威尔文本实测显示工具误报多，简化建议可能损害精确与节奏，只适合当反思提示。
我欣赏乔治·奥威尔的写作，所以贴了他 1946 年《政治与英语》前两段来测试。工具建议删掉一些修饰短语，但这些短语并不冗余，删掉会损失重要细节、信息或强调；有些删改还会让句子无意义或语法错误。进一步测试发现，它把“mostly”“many”当修饰语来批评，却不批评“some”。它高亮了一些长名词短语，但没有一个能合适地缩短；奥威尔用的被动语态大多恰当，改成主动反而别扭；它的左分支句子也完全不散乱。好的一面是，高亮长句效果不错，但长句不一定难读，连续多个短句也可能节奏不自然。它也没考虑冒号和分号可以分隔主句。我自己不会用，但能看出它可帮助思考句子如何改写，并提高对相关问题的意识。
Anthony-G查看英文原文
I’m an admirer of the writing of George Orwell so I thought it would be fitting to paste the first two paragraphs of his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language”. It suggested removing a number of modifier phrases. These phrases were not redundant and removing them would result in loss of important detail, information and/or emphasis. In some cases removing those words would result in nonsensical or syntactically incorrect sentences. Further experimentation showed that it complained about “mostly” and “many” as modifiers but not “some”. It highlighted a number of long noun phrases but none of these could be suitably shortened, and Orwell’s uses of the passive voice were mostly appropriate; re-phrasing these to be in the active voice would result in awkward prose. Its left branching sentences were not rambling at all. On the plus side, I thought its highlighting of long sentences worked well but not all long sentences are difficult to parse and a succession of multiple short sentences can have an unnatural rhythm. It also failed to take into account that colons and semi-colons can be used to separate main clauses. I wouldn’t use it myself, but I can see how it could be a useful tool for considering how a sentence can be rephrased and encouraging awareness of the issues it highlights.
被动语态等识别误报会误导写作者，工具准确性很关键。
这让我想起“Hemingway”应用被海明威作品打脸的例子。我还要指出：“I was exhausted.”不是被动语态！“Our work here is done.”也不该被高亮，它完全没问题。这种误报让我觉得它弊大于利。
conistonwater查看英文原文
This reminds me of the "Hemingway" app that failed Hemingway: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416 Can I also just point out that "I was exhausted." is not passive voice! And "Our work here is done." also shouldn't be highlighted, it's absolutely fine. What the hell? With these kinds of false positives, this seems like it would do more harm than good.
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