语言与文风2018lithub.com编辑精选
赞美长而复杂的句子
In Praise of the Long and Complicated Sentence
导读
这篇文章为长句和复杂句正名：在合适的语境里，绵长缠绕的句子能模拟思绪流动、层层递进地营造氛围，而不是单纯的冗长。对写作者的价值在于学会有意识地选择句长与结构，而不是被“短句才好”的教条绑住。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
长句适合表现思绪游走、视角变换和情绪堆积，短句则适合推进动作与给出结论，按表达意图选句式。
- 02
用层层从句、插入语和并列结构堆叠细节时，要让读者始终能抓住主干，避免把句子写成无法解析的迷宫。
- 03
可以借鉴迪伦·托马斯式的排比长句：连续“when...”从句不断累积意象，最后用一个短句收束，形成节奏落差。
- 04
科技与说明性写作中慎用长句，必要时拆成列表或分点，让信息更容易被“解析”。
HN 评论精选
用连续并列从句累积意象、最后以短句收束，是长句营造节奏与气势的典范。
迪伦·托马斯就很擅长这种长句。《圣诞回忆》里那段：“很多很多年前，当我还是个孩子，当威尔士还有狼，当红法兰绒衬裙颜色的鸟掠过竖琴形的山丘，当我们整日整夜在散发着潮湿农舍客厅里周日午后气息的洞穴中歌唱打滚，当我们用执事的颌骨追逐英国人和熊，在汽车之前，在车轮之前，在公爵夫人面孔的马之前，当我们光背骑着那些疯癫快乐的山丘时，下雪了，又下雪了。”
didgeoridoo查看英文原文
Dylan Thomas was always good for a few of these. “Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.” - A Child’s Christmas in Wales
长句适用于文学叙事，技术写作应拆解为列表或分点以便解析。
是的，长句在虚构作品里可以很精彩，像思绪漫游，一串短语带出不断变化的视角和感受。但在科学和技术写作里，长句可能难以理解，像孤立的证明，甚至像必须被解析的代码。那种内容我更愿意拆成列表或大纲，事实上我有时就是这么做的。
mirimir查看英文原文
Yes, long sentences can be great, in fiction. They're rather like wandering trains of thought. With sequences of phrases that evoke shifting perspectives, feelings, etc. But long sentences in scientific and technical writing can be impenetrable. Sort of like stand-alone proofs. Or even code, which must essentially be parsed. That stuff, I'd rather see broken out in a list or outline. And in fact, I sometimes do that.
长句可以自我指涉地开玩笑，让形式本身成为内容的一部分。
我最喜欢的长句出自 A. A. 米尔恩，而且它自我指涉：后面那段讲小猪皮杰听猫头鹰讲一个很长很长的故事，“故事一直讲下去，颇像这个句子”，直到他困得从窗口滑向水面……而作者紧接着写道：“这真的是故事的结尾了，写完上一个句子我已经很累了，我想就停在这里吧。”
chrismorgan查看英文原文
My favourite long sentence, from A. A. Milne, is self-aware: > In after-years he liked to think that he had been in Very Great Danger during the Terrible Flood, but the only danger he had really been in was in the last half-hour of his imprisonment, when Owl, who had just flown up, sat on a branch of his tree to comfort him, and told him a very long story about an aunt who had once laid a seagull’s egg by mistake, and the story went on and on, rather like this sentence, until Piglet who was listening out of his window without much hope, went to sleep quietly and naturally, slipping slowly out of the window towards the water until he was only hanging on by his toes, at which moment luckily, a sudden loud squawk from Owl, which was really part of the story, being what his aunt said, woke the Piglet up and just gave him time to jerk himself back into safety and say, “How interesting, and did she?” when—well, you can imagine his joy when at last he saw the good ship, The Brain of Pooh (Captain, C. Robin; Ist Mate, P. Bear) coming over the sea to rescue him. > And as that is really the end of the story, and I am very tired after that last sentence, I think I shall stop there.
福克纳用层层从句堆起“词语之墙”，以句法本身模拟压抑沉闷的空间与氛围。
福克纳《押沙龙，押沙龙！》中的长句：“从两点刚过直到漫长、静止、炎热、疲惫、死寂的九月午后几乎日落，他们坐在科德菲尔德小姐仍称作办公室的地方——因为她父亲曾这么叫——一间昏暗、闷热、不通风的屋子，百叶窗关闭并钉死了四十三个夏天，因为她还是女孩时有人相信光和流动的空气会带来热量、黑暗总是更凉快；随着阳光越来越满地从那侧照进房子，屋里布满黄色的光带，光带里满是尘埃，昆廷觉得那是老旧干漆的碎屑，从剥落的百叶窗被吹进来，就像风可能吹进来那样。”
wrycoder查看英文原文
“From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that—a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them.” — Absalom, Absalom by Faulkner As The Edge builds a wall of sound, Faulkner builds a wall of words.
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