语言与文风2010azer.com
倒置的“e”：编辑的噩梦（1993）
The Upside-Down "e" - an Editor's Nightmare (1993)
导读
1993年的文章回顾阿塞拜疆在苏联解体后从西里尔字母改用拉丁字母时，因一个倒置的“e”等特殊字符引发的排版与编辑混乱。这些评论把它扩展成更普遍的写作议题：书写工具（凿子、笔、字体、键盘）一直在塑造字母与表达，而自上而下设计的书写系统往往不如自然演化、兼顾日常使用的方案耐用。写作者可从中体会“形式即约束”：字符、排版和工具不是中性的，它们会改变你能写什么、读者能读到什么。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
书写工具会塑造文字形式：石凿偏爱直线，笔与黏土各有其惯用笔画，今天的字体和键盘同样在限制你的表达。
- 02
设计规则时优先考虑日常可用性，而不是追求“一音一符”式的理论完美；自然演化、经受过使用检验的系统往往更可靠。
- 03
别低估字符编码和排版这些细节：一个字母显示错误，就足以让整篇文章的传播和阅读体验崩掉。
- 04
技术限制也能催生表达形式（如ASCII艺术、笑脸符号），写作时可以主动把约束变成风格。
HN 评论精选
你说得对，人不该成为技术的奴隶，“尾巴不应摇狗”。但这太理想化、不现实。技术总有自己的局限和参数，而且这也不是技术第一次塑造字母表了——从字母表诞生起，同样的故事就在反复上演。希腊字母和拉丁字母明显受大理石凿刻影响：在石头上刻直线比刻圆线容易，所以很多大写字母由直线构成。阿拉伯连写体受笔的影响，楔形文字受黏土和尖棍影响，其他字母则来自竹片刻写。只不过今天起决定作用的工具变成了字体、电脑键盘和卫星传输——区别只是这些工具在字母设计者手里显得更新、更陌生。
weilawei查看英文原文
"You're right. Man should not be a slave to technology. The 'tail shouldn't wag the dog'. But that's idealistic and unreal. Technology always has its own limitations and parameters. It's not the first time technology has shaped the alphabet. The same story has been repeating itself since the origin of the alphabet. Greek and Latin were clearly determined by the hammer and chisel against marble - it's easier to carve straight lines in stone than rounded ones. That's why so many of our capitals are based on straight lines. The cursive Arabic was influenced by pen; cuneiform, by clay and sharp stick. Other alphabets were created by carving on bamboo. Simply today, the determining tools are fonts, computer keyboards, and satellite transmissions - the only difference being that they're a bit new and unfamiliar in the alphabet designers' hands."
没错，如果你请一帮语言学家委员会来设计正字法，得到的往往是一套可怕得几乎像国际音标的“一个音位对应一个字素”的学术练习，日常使用完全不实用。（这再次说明，自上而下设计的系统不如经数百年使用演化出来的系统稳健。）即使阿塞拜疆继续用西里尔字母，也会遇到同样的问题。比如哈萨克斯坦独立后，由于缺少带相应字母的打字机，把哈萨克语用作行政语言就麻烦不断。乌兹别克斯坦在这方面被大大低估了：苏联解体后，他们做了一件很巧妙的事——设计出没有“怪字母”的正字法，靠上下文区分 i 等音位的“后”与“前”版本；只在 o 和 u 这两种容易混淆的情况下，才在字母后加撇号，比如用 u' 而不是 ü。土耳其（使用关系密切的语言）解决“前 i”与“后 i”的办法是让一个带点、一个不带点——这里的人大概都知道这引发了各种 toLowerCase 相关的 bug。
quant18查看英文原文
Yes, when you ask a committee of linguists to design an orthography for you --- you get a godawful almost-IPA "one phoneme = one grapheme" academic exercise which is utterly impractical for everyday use. (Again, an object lesson in the robustness of top-down-designed systems vs. ones which evolved from centuries of use). Azerbaijan would have had the same problem even if they had stayed with the Cyrillic alphabet. E.g. after Kazakhstan became independent, they had lots of trouble trying to use Kazakh as the administrative language due to a shortage of typewriters with the appropriate letters. Uzbekistan is greatly underappreciated for having done something really neat after the Soviet breakup --- designing an orthography with no "funny letters". They use context to distinguish the "back" and "front" versions of phonemes like i [1]. And in the two cases where that would be too confusing (o and u), they put an apostrophe after the letter --- i.e. u', instead of something like ü. [1] Turkey, which speaks a closely-related language, solved the "front i" vs "back i" problem by making one dotted and the other dotless --- those of us here probably know all of the toLowerCase-related bugs that caused, I think articles about this have been posted a couple of months ago
我记得上世纪90年代初挪威语字体出过问题：打印、电脑间复制和电子邮件总会把 æ、ø、å 弄乱。甚至我就读的大学计算机系在90年代中期也没弄对。大概花了近十年，大多数打印件和邮件才正确。但跟阿塞拜疆相比，我们算幸运——至少不用自己造字体。顺便说，工具如何限制表达这个观点很好。我想 ASCII 艺术是另一个例子，而 ASCII 笑脸 :-) 至今还在。即便今天，混排文字和手绘或图像仍然足够麻烦，以至于我们很少费心去做。某种意义上挺奇怪：60年的计算机科学，竟还不足以复现手写便条的便利。
j-g-faustus查看英文原文
I remember we had problems with Norwegian fonts in the early 1990s - printing, copying between computers and email would invariably mess up the æ, ø and å. Even the computer science department of the university I attended in the mid-90s didn't get it right. I think it took close to ten years before the majority of printouts and emails were correct. But compared to Azerbaijan, I understand we were lucky - at least we didn't have to mess around with creating our own fonts :) Good point on how tools put constraints on expression, BTW. I guess ASCII art is another example, and the ASCII smiley :-) is still with us. Even today mixing text and freehand drawing or images is troublesome enough that we rarely bother. In a sense it is somewhat curious that 60 years of computer science has not been enough to replicate the convenience of a handwritten note...
也相关：Joel Spolsky 的《每个软件开发人员绝对、肯定必须知道的 Unicode 和字符集知识》。
techiferous查看英文原文
Also relevant: "The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets" http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html
同类还值得读
像说话一样写作
Write like you talk
这篇短文主张写作应像说话一样自然、清晰，避免装腔作势的书面腔。
语言与文风2015 · 647 分 · 272 评4 条写作要点编辑精选法律语言难懂源于写作不佳，而非专业概念
Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language
这是一项认知科学研究：法律文本难懂，主要不是因为充斥专业术语，而是因为写作者把句子写得又长又绕、修饰语层层嵌套、回指距离过远。
语言与文风2022 · 559 分 · 322 评5 条写作要点编辑精选写得简单
Write Simply
保罗·格拉汉姆在这篇短文里主张：好文章应该写得简单——用日常词汇、短句、直白的结构，不为显得聪明而堆砌复杂表达。
语言与文风2021 · 484 分 · 330 评4 条写作要点编辑精选Tortured phrases：科学写作中出现的一种可疑文风
Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science
《自然》新闻报道了一种在科学论文中蔓延的怪现象：原本标准的术语被同义替换软件改写成了古怪说法，比如把 "cloud computing" 写成 "haze figuring"。
语言与文风2021 · 329 分 · 256 评4 条写作要点编辑精选乔治·奥威尔 1940 年对《我的奋斗》的书评
George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf (1940)
这是奥威尔1940年对《我的奋斗》的书评。
语言与文风2014 · 305 分 · 240 评4 条写作要点编辑精选