On Writing Well CH17

I. Words and express

1. I could rhapsodize about the old pigskin——more passionately than any farmer——and describe the frenzied bleacherites caught up in the excitement of the auntumn classic.

rhapsodize  vt. 狂热地说，写作狂想诗文     (tell, narrate, recount, recite, enthuse)

bleacherite  n. 露天看台的观众

2. The answer is that these words have become even cheaper currency than the coins they were meant to replace.

用要被替换的硬币来表示一些写作中用词的陈旧，cheaper currency与coins对应，十分有趣

3. They come flooding automatically out of the typewriter of every scribe (sportswriter) in every press box.

come flooding automatically  "flooding"用在这里十分形象，如水流般不经思索地流出

4. A set or an inning doesn't have to be recycled into a stanza or a frame just to avoid redundancy. The cure is worse than the ailment.

inning  n. （棒球的）一局；轮到显身手的机会   (playing period, play)

stanza n. 演出期；局；场；一节    (text, matter)

redundancy n.过多；冗余；累赘

5. No nugget is too trivial or too boring if it can be cemented into that baroque edifice, the lead.

nugget  n.块  (hunk, lump, things)

edifice  n.大建筑物   (structure, construction)

6. American sport has always been interwoven with social history, and the best writers are men and women who make the connection.

interweave vt.使（与……交织）     (twist, twine, distort)

II. Summary

Writers should know that people read sports articles not only to find out who won, but to read them with enjoyment. So writers should put more fresh imagery instead of the old boring stuff. In the sports writing, we can mention the player's name more often and to keep the details simple.

Humanity make the articles special, which is also the area writers can present own style. What's more, we should care about who we are going to write about. We should not only wirte the famous sporters but the person whom doing something difficult, they have the achivement worth to write. When we prepare our material,  just as Zinsser mentioned, we should observe closely, interview in depth, listen to old-timers and ponder the changes.

III. Thoughts

其实今天这一章读的比较痛苦，实在是因为我自己对体育毫无兴趣，从来不关注这类新闻，更不用说读一些体育名人的传记或访谈了。尤其是一开篇，Zinsser的举例中出现了一堆不认识的词汇，真是得硬着头皮才能读下去。

读完了之后发现，Zinsser表明的观点十分简单，反复论证的依旧还是写作的“简化”和“人性化”，简练而言之有物，具有人格特色而不至于有失偏颇。毕竟，我们所接触到的许多体育新闻，大多是一些标题党，题目中写道“XX夺冠”、“XX败北”，文章中除了重复标题内容之外，空洞无物，读完之后除了知道比赛结果，对具体的细节一无所知。但是，阅读体育新闻是一种娱乐，读者期望的并非只是胜负而已，这就需要作者更为深入的观察与思考。作者需要去还原比赛细节，让读者如身临其境，或是展现运动员的风采，让读者从文章中了解到一个立体的运动员的形象，这样才是有趣而有意义的写作。