TOUGHTS

CHAPTER7

The gray area between bad words and good words is called “usage”.But how can we distinguish them?Zinsser introduce a dictionary to us:The American Heritage Dictionary.They assembled a panel composed  by writers,teachers and poems to help us appraise the new words and Zinsser once was a member of them.They use their knowledge to tell us which is the “correct usage”.If the writer is careful about his words,it’s signal to their readers that he is sensitive to the shading of usage.And Zinsser is more tolerant about the words but more strict to the grammar.And he also hates the random change from noun to the verb,the mixture of some words and the increasing jargon.He also introduce an approach to us to obtain the good usage,that is to separate usage from jargon.But some new usages that arrive with new political events are correct.Finally,Zinsser said that there is no king to tell us that which one is the good usage.All he want to tell us is that we should be careful about the usage so that we can express ourselves clearly and simply to someone else.

CHAPTER8

In this chapter,Zinsser told us that if you want to write well,you must write on a regular basis and follow several unities.The unities are pronoun,tense and mood.Before we write,we should make it clear that what pronoun,tense and mood do you want to use.And a more useful way is to ask yourselves these questions:

(1)In what capacity are you going to address?

(2)What pronoun and tense are you going to use?

(3)What style?

(4)What attitude are you going to take toward the material?

(5)How much do you want to cover?

(6)What one point do you want to make?

Also he added that don’t give youself too much pressure before you’re going to write.

WORDS

1.gray but important area

All this talk about good words and bad words brings us to a gray but important area called “usage.”

All these hassles brings us to a gray but important area that how can wen please our customers in our own way.

2.liberal/conservative

We turned out to be liberal in accepting new words and phrases, but conservative in grammar.

保守和开放

这里是昨天的笔记分享，都是词汇，我觉得非常有帮助，建议大家读一读：

# Day 4

hassle

1\. Ealier I mentioned an incident of college students **hassling** the administration, and in the last chapter I describerd myself as a word freak.

hassle这个词可以做动词，也可以做名词，非常实用。例如你要出国，要签证、查攻略、订机票宾馆...so much hassle!

hath no fury like

2\. Scholarship** hath no fury like** that of a language purist faced with sludge, and I shared Tuchman's vow that "authro" should never be authorized, just as I agreed with Lewis Mumford that the adverb "good" should be "left as the exclusive property of Ernest Hemingway".

这里的hath就是has的意思，是已经过时的写法，那为什么要这么些呢？因为这里的hath no fury like是一个“梗”，来自于习惯表达"Hell hath no fury like a (certain type of person) scorned"。

这里可以理解为，在学术界，没有什么事情比用词不规范更让语言洁癖者愤怒了。

The university might think nothing of hiking up the cost of tuition, but we'll show them that Hell hath no fury like a broke college student scorned!

The governor, after veering away from his party's core ideologies, is now discovering that Hell hath no fury like politicians scorned.

The outbreak of aristolochic acid is a disaster,but the government didi’t do anything.They will see that hell hath no fury like people scorned.

tacky

3\. On the other hand, only 66 percent of our panel rejected the verb "to contact," once regarded as **tacky**, and only half opposed the split infinitive and the verbs "to fault" and "to bus."

tacky和pompos, tinseled, gaudy 差不多，表示“浮夸” “俗气”。tacky强调的是“廉价、劣质”。

give okay to

4\. Probably I **gave my O.K. to** "regime."

新概念第四册第八课中有这样一句: ...an American-made dialysis machine need the EU's okay before it hits the market in Europe. 这篇文章是来自1997年的《经济学人》。从这句话中我们学到了okay原来还可以这样用！

和give okay to的类似表达还有give go-ahead to, give greenlight to。这样的表达形象、有趣。

We can’t do any research unless the government give akay to us.

it comes down to/it boils down to

5\. In the end** it comes down to** what is "correct" usage.

it comes down to类似的说法还有it boils down to，意思是“说到底”。例如What Eric wants boils down to just one thing: money. Eric无非就是想要一样东西，那就是钱！

flotsam/frill

6\. That's where all careful writers ought to be -- looking at every new piece of **flotsam** that washed up and asking "Do we need it?"

flotsam原意是(漂在海上或冲到岸边的)漂流物，废料，和我们之前见的frill差不多。frill本来表示衣服的褶边。这两个词都表示“废话”。

fall prey to

7\. Otherwise we might **fall prey to **disincentivization.

fall prey to和fall victim to差不多，表示“成为…的牺牲品；受…的影响。这个表达用到你的考试作文中，很出彩（前提是用得准确）。

We should banned the TCM,if not,we will fall prey to the superstition.

identify with/connect with/resonate with

8\. He is a real person taking us along on a real trip, and we can **identify with** him and Ann.

identify with表示“感同身受” “有共鸣”，和我们之前见的connect with差不多。类似的表达还有resonate with，本书后面也会出现。第九章出现了它的名词形式resonance.

doggedly

9\. What you think is definitive today will turn undefinitive by tonight, and writers who **doggedly** pursue every last fact will find themselves pursuing the rainbow and never settling down to write.

dog作为动词表示“纠缠”，例如林书豪一直受膝伤困扰，我们就可以说Injuries have dogged Jeremy Lin.

dogged可以表示“顽强的” “坚持不懈的”，例如dogged determinaition。

The researchers doggedly do the researches.