On Writing Well CH10 1/2

I. Words and express

1.The difference between an active-verb style and a passive-verb style—in  clarity and vigor—is the difference between life and death for a writer.

Zinsser认为主动动词和被动动词的差异决定了写作的成败与否，“life and death”在这里十分有趣

2.A style that consists of passive constructions will sap the reader's energy.

sap  deplete  synonymous: run down, exhaust, play out, tire

3.I can't picture someone being partly flabbergasted.

picture  synonymous: depict, render, show

flabbergasted  surprise

4.Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsiciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons.

"sow adjectives into the soil of prose" 指作者在文章中滥用形容词的情况，十分形象

lush and pretty 译为“富丽堂皇”

5.The adjective that exists solely as decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader.

这一句中将仅用作装饰的形容词给作者和读者双方带来的感受相提并论，“既是作者的自我放纵，同时也给读者增加了负担”。

6.Don't  get caught holding a bag of full of abstract nouns. You'll sink to the bottom of the lake and never be seen again.

前一句的a bag of full of abstract nouns和后一句的sink to the bottom of the lake 对应，指出大量使用抽象名词的弊端。

II. Summary

图片发自App