来源： "The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing"/牛津写作指南
书号： ISBN 978-0-425-17640-5
译者与年份：吴和平，2019年
版权声明：英文版原著版权归原书作者及企鹅出版社所有，以下中文版由吴和平试译，仅限于用于个人学习，转载请注明出处，遵守著作权法及其他相关法律的规定。
Chapter 2/第二章
Strategy and Style/策略和风格
Purpose, the end you're aiming at, determines strategy and style. Strategy involves choice - selecting particular aspects of a topic to develop, deciding how to organize them, choosing this word rather than that, constructing various types of sentences, building paragraphs. Style is the result of strategy, the language that makes the strategy work.
写作的意图，写文章的目的，决定了你应该使用何种写作策略和写作风格。写作策略包括：“选择从写作主题的哪些特定方面进行展开、决定怎么组织你的行文来写、选择这个词而不是那个词、构建各种类型的句子、分段。” 写作风格是写作策略的结果，是用语言使得你的写作策略起作用。
Think of purpose, strategy, and style in terms of increasing abstractness. Style is immediate and obvious. It exists in the writing itself; it is the sum of the actual words, sentences, paragraphs. Strategy is more abstract, felt beneath the words as the immediate ends they serve. Purpose is even deeper, supporting strategy and involving not only what you write about but how you affect readers.
写作风格(Style)、写作策略(Strategy)、写作意图(Purpose)，这三者的抽象程度，是逐渐增加的。写作风格(Style)是直接的、显而易见的，它存在于文章本身，它就是词汇、句子、段落的总集合。写作策略(Strategy)更加抽象一点，相对于文字直接表达的内容，写作策略是在文字之下更深一层。写作意图(Strategy)，则更加深入文章底层，它支持写作策略，它不仅包括你是怎么写的，还包括你如何影响你的读者。
A brief example will clarify these overlapping concepts. It was written by a college student in a fifteen-minute classroom exercise. The several topics from which the students could choose were stated broadly - "marriage", "parents", "teachers", and so on - so that each writer had to think about restricting and organizing his or her composition. This student chose "marriage":
一个简单的例子可以阐明这些有点重叠的概念。以下这篇短文是一个大学生在15分钟课堂作文练习中写出来的。提供给学生们选择的几个题目出的都很宽泛——“婚姻”、“父母”、“老师”，等等。因此，每个学生都必须考虑如何限定和组织自己的写法。这名学生选择了“婚姻”：
Why get married? or if you are modern, why live together? Answer: Insecurity. "Man needs woman; woman needs man." However, this cliche fails to explain need. How do you need someone of the opposite sex? Sexually is an insufficient explanation. Other animals do not stay with a mate for more than one season; some not even that long. Companionship, although a better answer, is also an incomplete explanation. We all have several friends. Why make one friend so significant that he at least partially excludes the others? Because we want to "join our lives." But this desire for joining is far from "romantic" - it is selfish. We want someone to share our lives in order that we do not have to endure hardships alone.
为什么结婚？ 如果你是一个现代人，为什么要和别人住在一起？ 答：“不安全感。”，“男人需要女人，女人需要男人。” 然而，这种陈词滥调解释不了“需求”。你怎么会需要和异性常住在一起呢？ 性不是一个充分的解释。其它动物和配偶在一起的时间不会超过一个季节，有些动物甚至没这么长。答：“陪伴”，这是一个好点儿的答案，但也不是一个完整的解释。我们每个人都有几个朋友，为什么你要让某个朋友如此地重要，以至于他/她至少在一定程度上，把你的其他朋友们排除在外？ 答：“因为我们想连接我们的人生”。但是，这种连接的渴望，远非“浪漫”——它其实是自私的。我们想要有人分享我们的人生，这样我们就不必独自忍受人生的艰难。
The writer's purpose is not so much to tell us of what she thinks about marriage as to convince us that what she thinks is true. Her purpose, then, is persuasive, and it leads to particular strategies both of organization and of sentence style. Her organization is a refinement of a conventional question/answer strategy: a basic question("Why get married?"); an initial, inadequate answer("Insecurity"); a more precise question("How do we need someone?"); a partial answer("sex"); then a second partial answer("companionship"); a final, more precise question("Why make one friend so significant?"); and a concluding answer("so that we do not have to endure hardships alone").
作者的目的，与其说是告诉我们她对婚姻的看法，不如说是在说服我们，让我们相信她的看法是正确的。因此，她的写作目的，是为了说服，这导致了她使用特定的写作策略，在行文上的组织，和在句型风格，这两方面都有：她在行文的组织方式上，使用的是一种精简版的，传统的问答模式：先问出一个基本问题(“为什么要结婚?”)，给出一个起先不充分的答案(“不安全感”)；再来一个细化点儿的问题(“为什么我们需要某个人?”)并给出部分答案(“性”)；然后，再来第二个不完整的答案(“陪伴”)；最后，抛出一个更确切的问题(“为什么让某一个特定的朋友如此重要?”)，然后给出一个总结性的答案(“这样我们就不必独自忍受苦难”)。
The persuasive purpose is also reflected in the writer's strategy of short emphatic sentences. They are convincing, and they establish an appropriate informal relationship with readers.
说服性的写作意图，也体现了在上面这位作者使用了短而有力的句式，这些短句令人信服，而且和读者建立了一种恰当的交情。
Finally, the student's purpose determines her strategy in approaching the subject and in presenting herself. About the topic, the writer is serious without becoming pompous. As for herself, she adopts an impersonal point of view, avoiding such expressions as "I think" or "it seems to me." On another occasion they might suggest a pleasing modesty; here they would weaken the force of her argument.
最后，该同学的写作意图，决定了她如何逼近主题、展示自己的写作策略。关于婚姻这个写作话题，她做到了既严肃又不浮夸。至于她自己，她采取了一种非己所欲的写法，避免使用诸如“我认为”或“在我看来”这样的表达方式。在另一些写作场合下，这些表达方式可能是一种令人愉悦的谦逊，但是在这篇短文如果用这些表达方式，反倒会让她论辩的力量减弱。
These strategies are effectively realized in the style: in the clear rhetorical questions, each immediately followed by a straightforward answer; and in the short uncomplicated sentences, echoing speech.(There are even two sentences that are grammatically incomplete - "Answer: Insecurity" and "Because we want to 'join our lives.'") At the same time the sentences are sufficiently varied to achieve a strategy fundamental to all good prose - to get and hold the reader's attention.
这些写作策略，有效地地体现在她的写作风格上：在那些明确的设问句中，每个问句都紧跟着一个直截了当的回答；在这些简洁明了的句子中，她的演讲得到了呼应。(甚至有两个句子在语法上是不完整的—— 答：“不安全感。”、答：“因为我们想连接我们的人生”。同时，这些句子进行了足够多的变换，足以实现所有优秀文章的基本策略——吸引并抓住读者的注意力。
Remember several things about strategy. First, it is many-sided. Any piece of prose displays not one but numerous strategies - of organization, of sentence structure, of word choice, of point of view, of tone. In effective writing these reinforce one another.
关于写作策略，以下几点请记住。首先，它是多面的。任何一篇文章都表现出多种策略而不是只有一种 —— 组织行文的策略、句型结构的策略、遣词用句的策略、阐述观点的策略、语气语调的策略。在有效的写作中，所有这些方面是相辅相成的。
Second, no absolute one-to-one correspondence exists between strategy and purpose. A specific strategy may be adapted to various purpose. The question/answer mode of organizing, for example, is not confined to persuasion: it is often used in informative writing. Furthermore, a particular purpose may be served by different strategies. In our example the student's organization was not the only one possible. Another writer might have organized using a "list" strategy:
第二点，写作策略和写作意图之间，不存在绝对的一一对应的关系。一种特定的写作策略可以适用于多种不同的写作意图。例如问答式的行文模式，并不局限于说服性的写作意图：它经常用于告知信息类的写作。此外，一种特定的写作意图，也可以通过多种不同的写作策略来一起实现。在我们上面看到的例子中，该同学的行文方式不是唯一可能的选项。另一位作者或许使用了“列表”策略:
People get married for a variety of reasons. First...Second...Third...Finally...
人们之所以结婚，是有各种各样的原因的。第一…第二…第三…最后…
Still another might have used a personal point of view, or taken a less serious approach, or assumed a more formal relationship with the reader.
还有一些作者，或许使用个性化的表达观点的方式，或者，采取不那么严肃的写法，或者，假设自己和读者之间，是一种更正式的关系。
Style/写作风格
In its broadest sense "style" is the total of all the choices a writer makes concerning words and their arrangements. In this sense style may be good or bad - good if the choices are appropriate to the writer's purpose, bad if they are not. More narrowly, "style" has a positive, approving sense, as when we say that someone has "style" or praise a writer for his or her "style." More narrowly yet, the word may also designate a particular way of writing, unique to a person or characteristic of a group or profession:"Hemingway's style," "an academic style."
从广义上讲，“写作风格”，是作者对于遣词造句的安排做出的全部选择。从这个意义上说，写作风格可能是好的，也可能是坏的——如果写作风格适合作者的写作意图，那么就是好的；如果不适合，那就是坏的。狭义地说，“写作风格”有积极、赞许的意思，就像当我们说某人有“风格”，或称赞某个作家的“风格”一样。更狭义地说，“写作风格”这个词还可以指一种独特的写作方式，它归属于特定的个人，特定的群体，或特定的职业，例如：“海明威风格”，“学术风格”等。
Here we use style to mean something between those extremes. It will be a positive term, and while we speak of errors in style, we don't speak of "bad styles." On the other hand, we understand "style" to include many ways of writing, each appropriate for some purposes, less so for others. There is no one style, some ideal manner of writing at which all of us should aim. Style is flexible, capable of almost endless variation. But one thing style is not: it is not a superficial fanciness brushed over the basic ideas. Rather than the gilding, style is the deep essence of writing.
在本书，我们用写作风格来表示介于好和坏两个极端之间的东西。这将是一个积极的术语，当我们谈到写作风格上的错误时，我们不会说“糟糕的写作风格”。另一方面，我们理解“写作风格”是包括许多写作方式的，每种写作风格都适合于某些特定的写作意图而不是其它的。世上没有一种万能的写作风格，没有一种理想的写作方式，是我们人人都应该追求的。写作风格是灵活多变的，几乎可以无限变化。但万变不离其宗的是：写作风格并不是掩盖作者要表达的基本思想的一种表面上的浮华辞藻。写作风格并不是给写作镀金，它是写作这件事的深层本质。
For Practice/为了写作实践
>Selecting one of the topics you listed at the end of Chapter 1, work up a paragraph of 150 to 200 words. Before you begin to write, think about possible strategies of organization and tone. organization involves (1) how you analyze your topic, the parts into which you divide it, and (2) the order in which you present these parts and how you tie them together. Tone means (1) how you feel about your subject - angry, amused, objective, and so on; (2) how you regard your reader - in a formal or an informal relationship; and (3) how you present yourself.
>从你根据第一章结尾的作业列出的题目中选择一个题目，写一个150到200个词汇的段落。在你开始写之前，考虑一下写作策略上，你可能采取何种可能的组织行文和语气表达。组织行文包括：(1)你如何分析你选择的主题，你将把它切分成哪些部分； (2)你以什么样的顺序展示这些部分？如何把它们联系在一起？语气表达的意思是(1)你自己对你选择的主题报以什么感觉？ 生气、有趣、客观等等；(2)你如何看待你的读者——无论是在正式的关系，或是在非正式的关系中;(3)你如何展现自己？
When you have the paragraph in its final stage, on a separate sheet of paper compose several sentences explaining what strategies you followed in organizing your paragraph and in aiming for a particular tone, and why you thought these would be appropriate.
当你写的这一小段进入完工阶段时，在一张单独的纸上写几句话，解释你在组织行文时，采用了什么样的写作策略以配合指向你的写作意图/写作基调，以及，你为什么认为这些写作策略是合适的。
(以上为本书第二章英中双语对照版本，中文译文请看《牛津写作指南第二章（Oxford Essential Guide to Writing, Chapter2）-译文》