Chapter 10 Usage

这是本书（Style: Toward Clarity and Grace）的最后一章，讨论英语的用法问题。

Style, Grammar, and Choice

(la) The comptroller did not support our research sufficiently.

(lb) There was an insufficiency of comptroller research support for us.

虽然上述两个句子，在语法上都没有问题，但是很显然，绝大多数人都会更喜欢第一种写法。可见，除了语法问题，行文的方式对于写作而言也是一个极其重要的问题。这涉及到英语中词汇用法的问题。

虽然有些原则大多数人都可以接受，比如：

Don't begin a sentence with and or but.

Don't end a sentence with a preposition. （不要以介词结尾一个句子）

Don't split infinitives. （不要分割不定式）

Don't use double negatives. （不要用双重否定）

Unfortunately, questions of "good" grammar are not so easily settled: （不幸的是，对于什么是好的语法却不是一件容易定夺的事。）Many of the grammatical rules that some among us like to invoke are not linguistic fact, but classroom folklore, invented by eighteenth-century grammarians out of whole cloth, repeated by editors unwilling to determine whether those rules comport with reality, taught by teachers who teach what textbooks tell them, and ignored by the best writers everywhere. （很多语法规则只不过是课堂上传授的，由18世纪的语法学家无中生有制造出来的东西，优秀的作者往往并不在意。）

While we might generally agree on what counts as clear and why clarity is important, not all of us will agree on what counts as correct. （虽然我们大体上承认清晰简洁的写作是重要的，但是并非所有人都对什么是正确的写法存在共识。）