语言与文风2021paulgraham.com编辑精选
写得简单
Write Simply
导读
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。文章本身就是一个可读性极高的样本，而评论区的讨论把它推到更有用的层面：简单不等于破碎，节奏、语法清晰度和段落结构同样决定读者能否顺畅读完。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
优先使用日常词汇和短句，能删的词就删，把“显得聪明”的表达换成读者一眼能懂的说法。
- 02
简单不等于全篇短句：长短句、长短词交替使用，才能形成顺畅的阅读节奏。
- 03
检查每个词的语法功能是否唯一，避免读者读到句子后半段，才回头判断前面某个词是名词还是动词。
- 04
段落的首句和末句要能独立概括该段要点，方便读者在脑中搭建整篇文章的结构。
HN 评论精选
流畅感来自长短节奏和词性无歧义，而非一味求短。
读起来轻松不只靠用简单的词。为了最大化可扫读性，需要长短词、长短句混用，形成一种“流动感”。据说多夫拉托夫的俄语散文会避免同一句里出现首字母相同的词，读者察觉不到，但文字就是“飞”起来。另一个技巧是确保每个词的语法功能没有歧义：比如“the biography ... written by his Grand Vizier”读不清到底是谁写了谁；“your work demands a certain level of precision”也可以读成 demands 是名词；“That 'simple' writing lasts longer...”里的 that 是连词还是限定词，要读下去才知道。细节很小，但越注意，文字越清晰。
cousin_it查看英文原文
When something feels easy to read, it's not just a matter of using simple words. To maximize scanability, you need to use a mix of long and short words, and also mix long and short sentences, until you achieve a kind of "flow". Famously, Dovlatov's prose (in Russian) avoids having words that start with the same letter in the same sentence, which is unnoticeable to the reader but makes the words just fly off the page. Another trick I've found is making sure each word has unambiguous function. Here's some examples from other comments: I had this impression recently while reading the Akbarnama, which is a sort of court-approved biography of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, written by his Grand Vizier -- Was the Emperor written, or was it the biography? There are some cases in which your work demands a certain level of precision -- It could've continued like "in which your work demands are excessive", so you don't know if "demands" is a noun or a verb until you read on. That "simple" writing lasts longer is disproved by many works of literature that have made their way to us through history -- It could've continued like "that simple writing is not so simple", so you don't know if "that" is a conjunction or determiner until you read on. These are small things, but somehow the more I notice them, the clearer my writing becomes.
过度断句会破坏信息结构，段落首尾句应能独立承载要点。
只有我不喜欢这种文风吗？读起来全是停顿和磕绊，读了四段还没搞清作者想说什么。好文章里段落的首尾句往往就足以概括要点，帮读者建立心智地图；这篇的“打嗝式”写法让人无法预判句子走向，必须整句读完才懂。我平时很喜欢 PG 的文章，但这篇读到第四段就停了。
thanhhaimai查看英文原文
Am I the only one not very fond of this style of writing? It's the constant pauses and hiccups that I'm reading. Four paragraphs into it, and I still don't get a lot of information about what the author is trying to convey. In good essays, the first and last sentence in a paragraph are often enough to summarize the points. It helps set the context, and makes it much easier for the reader to make a mental map of the overall idea. In this article, its "hiccup" style of writing makes it much harder to build a mental map. You can't predict where it will go until you fully read the sentence. I usually enjoy reading most of PG essays. For this one, I don't enjoy reading it, and I stopped reading after paragraph 4.
可读性可以量化检验，宣称简单的文本也难免有长句难词。
把 PG 的原文粘进 readable.com 的可读性工具：整体评级 A，Flesch-Kincaid 年级 5.9，非常平易；但 507 个词、38 个句子里，有 4 句被判“超长”、15 句“长”；被标出的两个“难词”颇有讽刺意味——“unnecessarily intellectual”。
gojomo查看英文原文
For grins I pasted PG's text into the demo readability tool at <https://app.readable.com/text/?demo>. 'Write Simply' received an overall grade of 'A', and a very-approachable Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 5.9. It's said to be readable by 100% of the literate general public, which is only 85% of the full general public. But, out of the 507 words and 38 sentences, 4 sentences were flagged as "very long" (over 30 syllables) and 15 as "long" (over 20 syllables). Two 'hard words' – over 12 letters or over 4 syllables – were flagged, somewhat ironically: "unnecessarily intellectual".
写作建议多属品味之争，用已有读者反馈验证效果要警惕样本偏差。
我对写作有看法，PG 也有。共同点是这些看法都不可证伪——没有实证检验，我们只是在分享品味。“我一写长文转发就掉”这类个例再多也不等于数据。网上另有人写绵密诗性的文字，一简化读者就散了。作者与读者是互相选择的：只在自己已有的自愿读者群里测量效果，测的不是说服力，而是你的文字取悦“本来就喜欢你的人”的程度。没有严谨的实证方法，这些讨论跟讨论裙摆高度、领带宽度差不多。
a4isms查看英文原文
I have opinions about writing. So does Mr. Graham. What our opinions have in common is that they are not falsifiable. Unless we validate our conjectures with empirical evidence, we're really just sharing our taste. "Oh no," you may say, "I have tested it, and when I write a longer essay, my retweets and upvotes decline." Very well, but the plural of anecdote is not 'data.' Somewhere else on the Internet, there is someone with poetic, dense writing. When they simplify it, their audience dries up. Writers and audiences find each other. If you try to measure the effect of your writing using only an audience that has selected your writing voluntarily, you are not measuring your effectiveness, you are measuring the degree to which your writing pleases people who already like your writing. Absent a properly constructed empirical approach, we might as well be discussing hemlines and necktie widths.
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