试试这四招，告别“小学一年级作文水平”

在掌握基本套路，先写出一个正确的句子中我和大家分享了句子的基本结构，目的是帮助大家能够写出一个正确的句子。今天我们聊一聊如何写好一个句子，我们先从choppy sentence说起。

值得注意的一点是，我在文中尽量不讲术语（因为我也不知道具体是啥），希望大家能够理解句子的本质掌握它的讨论，不需要过于纠结术语。

# 什么是Choppy sentence？

Choppy这个词在字典中的意思是“波浪起伏的”，除此之外它还有一个意思：marked by sudden stops and starts, not connected smoothly。Choppy sentence就是一段话由大量的短句、简单句构成，造成的结果是过于啰嗦，先感受一下这两段中文：

我5:30起床。我穿衣服。我刷牙洗脸。我吃早餐。我上班去。

我5:30起床，紧接着我会穿衣服、刷牙洗脸、吃早餐，然后去上班。

第一句话就是一个choppy sentence，第二句话重新组合了一下就连贯了很多。举一个英文的例子：

英语相比中文来说更“惜字如金”，能不重复的地方就不重复，能用一句话说清楚的别用两句 -- Cut meaningless and repeated words and obvious implications. 

例如The boy asked his father a question. The boy is five years old. The question was about death. 这句话说的太啰嗦了，我们可以直接写成The five-year-old boy asked his father a question about death.  

# 怎么破？

1⃣️ 利用连词按逻辑把句子连起来

主要用到的连词有：and, but, or, nor, yet, for, so。这个方法其实就是把“简单句” （simple sentence）变成了“复合句”（compound sentence），复合句相比来说可以让我们表达更复杂的内容。

Choppy

She took dance classes. She had no natural grace or sense of rhythm. She eventually gave up the idea of becoming a dancer.

Revised

She took dance classes, but she had no natural grace or sense of rhythm, so she eventually gave up the idea of becoming a dancer. 

2⃣️ 把其中一个句子变成“非独立句”（dependent sentence）

先看这个句子：Bears emerge from hibernation in the spring. They wander through wetlands. They feed mainly on grasses.

这段话中有三个简单句，主语都是bears，我们可以把他们写成一个句子：When bears emerge from hibernation in the spring, they wander through wetlands and feed mainly on grasses. 

句子发生了什么变化？首先后两个句子用and连在了一起，然后把Bears emerge from hibernation in the spring. 这个完整的独立的句子变成了一个“非独立的句子”，用When来引导。

这种方法的本质是把句子变成了“复合复杂句”（compound-complex sentence）：用if, when, after这样的词引导一个“非独立句”，然后再写一个完整的复合句。

3⃣️  用同位语插入

Choppy

Eric has denied an interest in running for the senate. Eric is the former governor of Minnesota.

Revised

Eric, the former governor of Minnesota, has denied an interest in running for the senate. 

利用同位语很多时候比从句更加的简洁，例如最新一期的《经济学人》中国板块中有这样一句话：

EIGHTEEN helicopters land with a roar at Zhurihe, a military base in Inner Mongolia. Troops pour onto the endless prairie in a mock airborne assault, marking, said China Daily, a state-owned newspaper, “the first time the People’s Liberation Army had presented fighting manoeuvres in a parade” (troops usually just march up and down). 

这里出现了...at Zhurihe, a military base in Inner Mongolia. 我们写成...at Zhurihe, which is a military base in Inner Mongolia. 也可以的，不过这里可以把which is省去，这样比较“利索”。后面的...China Daily, a state-owned newspaper也是同样的道理。

4⃣️  用分词，把其中一句变成修饰句

Choppy

My aunt is very strict with my cousin. She expects her to study all the time.

Revised

My aunt is very strict with my cousin, expecting her to study all the time. 

大家可能会说，这句话可不可以变成：

My aunt is very strict with my counsin and expects her to study all the time.

最好不要这样写，因为这里有一个and，我们最好遵守“平行结构” (parallel construction)，是句子结构保持平衡。例如Eric is handsome and has good sense. 就不平衡，可以改成：Eric is handsome and sensible.

Choppy

I was exhausted. I stared at the page. I was unable to comprehend a single word.

Revised

Exhausted, I stared at the page, unable to comprehend a single word.

旋元佑老师在《文法俱乐部》中说：

作文中若只用单句，除了风格不够成熟外，表达力亦嫌薄弱。间杂复句、合句于文中，则有助于表达较为复杂的观念，亦可丰富举行的变化，是风格趋于成熟。然而，复句、合居包含两个以上的子句，期间往往有重复的元素，因而有进一步精简的空间。

他认为简单句是初级句型，而复句、合句是中级句型，而把句子减化才是高级句型。例如他在书中举了这样的例子：

1. Beer is most delicious.

2. It is chilled to 6 ℃.

3. (A) Beer which is chilled to 6 ℃ is most delicious.

4. Beer chiled to 6  ℃ is most delicious.

比较一下我们会发现第4个句子和第3个表达的意思是一样的，但是更简洁。我们平时在写作中要注意不要过度使用从句，要看看这句话能否写得更简洁。平时我们在阅读的过程总也要注意赏析，看作者是如何安排组织语言安排结构的。例如这期《经济学人》的封面文章中有这样一句话：

In charge of this terrifying arsenal is a man who was brought up as a demigod and cares nothing for human life -- witness the innocents beaten to death with hammers in his gigantic gulag. 

这段话中我们可以学习到In charge of this terrifying arsenal is a man这部分是倒装，那为什么会这么写呢？试比较下面这两个句子：

The man who is in charge of this terrifying arsenal was brrought up...

In charge of this terrifying arsenal is a man who was brought up...

很明显第二句要比第一句好，把主语a man放在了句子后面可以很方便地接从句，使得主语的内容更加详细。这样的句型就是值得观察、理解和模仿的。

但是大家请注意，上面说了这么多，并不是说鼓励大家写长句子。句子要有长有短才行。

# 长句还是短句？

《英语修辞大全》中说：

The rhetorical effect of long or short sentences depends on purpose and context. Without an appropriate purpose or context, short sentences used abundantly in a passage only make for choppiness and monotony. Likewise, too many long sentences can make a passage heavy and laborious.

Skillful writers, however, can exlpoit variation in sentence length to great effect to express different moods or attitudes, to describe action or events or to emphasize a point. 

无论是长是短一定要从目的和情景出发。例如下面这段话你怎么看：

Dick Boulton looked at the doctor. Dick was big man. He knew how big a man he was. He liked to get into fights. He was happy.

可能大家会觉得这段话写得“太小学生了吧”。这段话出自大文豪海明威的作品The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife，他用这段话来表现出Dick这个人物和医生的冲突，于是才选用了这样的表达方式。

读书会这期读的是Peak 《刻意练习》，群内的一位朋友小咪就对文中长短句进行了赏析，在此分享给大家：

原文地址：http://www.jianshu.com/p/4e44c7de144e

在内容上，我注意到了作者对于短句的使用。有个比较极端/典型的例子是：

They practiced. A lot.

短句有力，力量强大，非常能够抓住读者注意力。此处讲They practiced a lot. 特意分成两句话去写，就是为了突出和强调多次练习的重要性。再例如，段首句：

These are not isolated examples.

读到这句，身为读者的我自然而然就会追问 -- 既然并不是孤立的例子，那这些在不同领域表现极为优秀突出的人们到底有什么共性呢？除了短句之外，我还关注了作者写长句的时所采用的结构。比较突出的一点是，常用插入语，而不是一味地写从句。类似的句型极其多，在此之举两个例子:

Long term memory doesn't have the same limitations -- in fact, no one has ever found the upper limits of long-term memory -- but it takes much longer to deploy.

I was reading the digits at a rate of one per second -- too fast for him to transfer the digits into his long-term memory -- so it was no surprise that he was running into a wall at numbers that were about eight or nine digits long.

对于我们这些英语学习者来说来说，长句读起来相对费劲，写起来更容易出错。合理使用破折号等标点符号，插入语等成分是帮助减轻认知负担的好方式，检查时也更容易发现错误。

另外一点就是，永远不要为了写长句而去写。一个句子应该是一个完整的意思，长是因为包含更多的细节而非将几个不同意思硬凑在一起。比如上面的第二个例子，讲的是“我以一秒一个数字的速度念出来（这个速度太快了，他没有时间将数字存储为长期记忆），导致他总是卡在八九个数字的水平上跨不过去。” 其核心意思是：速度太快，导致失败。 非常简单的一个意思，没有多余的idea，但说清需要一些细节帮助理解，这就是两个破折号中文字出现的意义。

总结来看：句子是完整表意的基本结构，长短只是结构差异。短句表意鲜明且有力，通常是truth claim或者论点。长句包含更多的细节，经常是做explanation或者narrative.