写作方法2010grellas.com
关于写作（以及法律）
On writing (and law)
导读
这篇帖子围绕一篇关于写作（尤其法律写作）的文章展开。评论者从“好写作必须达成目的”的角度批评原文风格华丽、可操作指导不足，并延伸到合同起草与编程的类比，以及法律写作建议对技术写作的普适性。对写作者的价值在于：它提醒我们写作要服务目的，精确与可读性常需权衡。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
先明确写作目的和读者；“好”的标准是是否达成目的，而不是句子是否漂亮。
- 02
把抽象的风格建议转成可操作步骤：与其说“要有逻辑必然性”，不如给出结构、删改和检查清单。
- 03
精确表达与可读性存在张力：拆分长句可能增加歧义，合同/技术写作中有时需保留长句或使用定义明确的术语。
- 04
法律/技术写作可当作“用自然语言编程”：先列明条件与后果，再组织成文。
HN 评论精选
好写作以目的达成为标准；华丽表达若不能教会读者，就是失败的写作。
我不愿这么说，因为 grellas 是社区里非常活跃、有价值的成员，显然在意自己的文字；作为写作者，我也怕直接批评。但我必须说：我不认为这是好写作。写作像设计，只有达成目的才叫“好”。这篇文章的目的似乎是帮人（尤其律师）写得更好，可它的一些技巧藏在漂亮句子下面。比如那段说倡导性写作应体现“肌肉感”、像引擎盖下有力引擎的段落，说得都对，但我不确定它能帮到还没理解这一点的人。
swombat查看英文原文
I hate to do this, since grellas is a very active and valuable member of this community and clearly cares about his wordsmithing, and as a writer myself I bleed personally and profusely at any direct criticism (I heal up, too, but that doesn't mean it didn't hurt). However, I must say it: I don't think this is good writing. Writing is like design. It can only be meaningfully called "good" when it achieves a purpose. What is the purpose of this article? It seems to be "to help people (lawyers in particular) to write better". Does it do that? Well, it's got some tips about writing better, but they are generally hidden underneath the beautiful sentences. Let's take, as an example, one of the clearer paragraphs: In advocacy, good writing will reflect muscularity, pulling a reader from first to last by force of logical inevitability. This style requires a firm grasp of subject. It requires solid, understated control so as to convey a feel of assured confidence. And it avoids key flaws: it does not strain, or vaunt, or table-pound, or attack the person. It is professional. It has class. It works like a powerful engine under the hood: it does not show itself, but anyone who hears that quiet hum will immediately sense its power. Done right, it projects quintessential vigor: it races along and even leaps off the page on the strength of its own power alone. That's all very true, but I'm not entirely sure it will help someone who doesn't already understand this point. It is not actionable advice for people who don't already know how to do it. This article would serve its purpose better if it not only described what good writing is, but also how to achieve it, and if it did so in a way that makes it easier for the reader to extract the information out of it (at the moment, the only way to get the information out of this article is to read through every single sentence, and evaluate each of them to see if it actually brings some new insight). That said, the prose is beautiful. But this article is like a beautiful design that looks brilliant but isn't functional (either that, or I haven't figured out the purpose of this article).
合同起草类似编程，但自然语言歧义使精确表达更难，可读性与精确性需要权衡。
我是程序员/企业主，曾需要起草几份专业合同但请不起专业律师。律师朋友给了我大量合同样本和起草笔记，我花了六周复制、粘贴和修改。几周后我得出结论：起草合同很像编程，两者都旨在精确规定各种条件下应发生什么，比如“若甲方终止协议，乙方应得到 X、Y、Z”。关键区别是：编程语言为精确、无歧义而建，英语不是；很难把英语写得完全无歧义，更难写得不能被有意曲解。拆分句子提高可读性，常会增加新的“合理”解释方式；有时一个500词的句子比五个100词的句子更容易精确表达含义。许多英语词有多义，所以常要用法律先例确定精确含义的少见词。
bromley查看英文原文
I'm a programmer/business owner that once needed several specialist contracts drafted, but couldn't afford to hire a specialist lawyer to draft them. A lawyer friend of mine gave me a load of sample contracts and drafting notes, and I spent the next 6 weeks copying, pasting, and modifying. I'm not convinced it was the best use of my time, and it's quite possible the resulting documents were a legal disaster (although I thought they were pretty good). But it was certainly an interesting experience. After a couple of weeks I came to the conclusion that drafting contracts is actually a lot like programming. The aim of both is to specify precisely what should happen in response to various conditions. if partyA terminates agreement then partyB should get X, Y, and Z. And so on. One key difference is that, whilst programming languages are built for precise, unambiguous writing, English is not. It's very hard to write English in a completely unambiguous way. It's even harder to write English in a way that can't be intentionally misinterpreted by someone who stands to gain by doing so. Breaking up a sentence to improve the readability can often add new ways in which the meaning can "reasonably" be interpreted. Often it's easier to be precise in meaning with a 500-word sentence than with five 100-word sentences. And many English words can be interpreted in multiple ways, so you often have to use unusual words that have a precise accepted meaning set by legal precedent. Hence the complexity you often see in legal documents. I talked to my lawyer friend about this, and he agreed. He also pointed out that, as professional legal drafters improve, they typically write more readable documents with less jargon, but no less precision of meaning. Irrespective of how precise they are in meaning, contracts that are hard to make sense of are often the sign of a rookie. A bit like programming again.
法律写作的许多建议可迁移到技术写作和一般说服性写作。
我认为可以把“法律写作”换成“技术写作”，文章仍然切中要害。虽然它聚焦法律写作，但作者给出的许多建议适用于许多需要解释、说服或阐明的情境。
rmah查看英文原文
I think you could replace "legal writing" with "technical writing" and the article would still be on the mark. While it focuses on legal writing, many bits of advice the author gives would apply to many situation where you're trying to explain, convince or illuminate with your prose.
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