Chapter1&2

Words & Exprssions

1. circulate

A student asked if we found it useful to circulate in in the literary world.(p4)

explanation: If you circulate at a party or other social occasion, you move among the guests and talk to many different people.

e.g. After John had circulated amongst his guests, dinner was announced.

2.gusto

"I love symbols!" Dr. Brock exclaimed, and he described with gusto the joys of weaving them through his work.(p4)

explanation: if you do something with gusto, you do it with a lot of eagerness and energy

e.g. They sang hymns with great gusto.

3.mollify

During the 1960s the president of my university wrote a letter to mollify the alumni after a spell of campus unrest.(p7)

explanation: if you mollify someone, you make them less upset or angry.

e.g.Francis immediately set about mollifying her...

4.a spell of

During the 1960s the president of my university wrote a letter to mollify the alumni after a spell of campus unrest.(p7)

explanation: A spell of a particular activity, type of weather, etc. is a period of time that is usually short, during which this activity, type of weather, etc. occurs

e.g. At that time there was a fright cold spell in Britain...

5.assail

The reader is someone with an attetion span of about 30 seconds-- a person assailed by many forces competing for attention.(p8)

explanation: Things that assail you arrive or happen in large numbers in an undesirable way.

e.g. All sorts of problems assailed us suddenly...

6.mystifying

...they obviously missed something, and they go back over the mystifying sentence, or over the whole paragraph, piecing it out like an ancient rune, making guesses and moving on.(p9)

explanation: Something that mystifies you amazes you because it is strange and impossible to explain or understand.

e.g. rituals are totally mystifying to visitors from other lands.

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Thoughts

But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what-- these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in propotion to education and rank.

从小到大我们学写作时，经常被教育要用高级的词汇，复杂的句式来体现我们的水平，我们忘记了我们写作是要给读者看的，怎样让读者读起来舒服才是最重要的。我们经常把一件简单的事讲得极其复杂，从而显示我们水平的高超，然而简洁有力地表达自己想说的内容也是一种本事。