The Sound of Your voice.
WORDS
1.Commodity
My commodity as a writer, whatever I’m writing about, is me. And your commodity is you.
Something or someone that is useful and valued.稀缺品啤呼，有價值的物品
Eg. Patience is a rare commodity.
an actor who is a hot commodity [=who is very popular] in Hollywood right now
仿寫：At this time, precise writing is a commodity.
2.Nail
The nails of grammar and syntax(句法規(guī)則） are in place and the English is as good as the writer can make it.
這里的nail應(yīng)該是個metaphor,將語法和句法規(guī)則“釘”在正確的位置上碳褒，精準景殷，牢固。
關(guān)于nail之前學到過：nail sth down 意思是弄清，確認北专。
擴展：
If you describe someone hit the nail on the head, you think they said the exact right thing.
I think it would civilize people a bit more if they had decent conditions.' — 'I think you've hit the nail on the head.'
“我認為堤结，如果人們有良好的環(huán)境绎狭，就會更有教養(yǎng)一點灌侣。”——“我想你說到點子上了卖陵≡舛ィ”
3.tumble out
The sentence is so folksy that we imagine ourselves sitting on the porch of White’s house in Maine. White is in a rocking chair, puffing on a pipe, and the words just tumble out in his storyteller’s voice.
脫口而出
Sophie didn't know why she said it; the words just tumbled out of her mouth: "So was Socrates."
蘇菲也不知道自己是怎么回事，脫口就說："蘇格拉底也是這樣啊!"
as well as numbed by the sheer volume of Dublin-tinctured words that tumbled out of him—you might learn many dozens of mind-bogglingly arcane facts.
談定地聽著他都柏林味十足的口音在那里滔滔不絕——你也許能得知很多神秘的事實泪蔫，開闊了眼界棒旗。
4.labor
There’s no need to labor all the reasons why this stuff is so terrible.It’s crude（粗略的）.It’s corny(老生常談的）. It’s verbose. （冗長的）
to repeat or stress something too much or too often詳細分析（貶義）
Eg.She has a tendency to labor the obvious.
I don't want to labor [=belabor] the point, but I think I should mention again that we are running out of time.
labor under a delusion/misapprehension/misconception
If you continue to believe something that is not true, you are laboring under a delusion/misapprehension/misconception.
He still labors under the delusion that other people value his opinion.
仿寫：Professor Kendler said that we do not have to labor the answer that the respondents give us too much because we just have meager time.
5.Kitsch/deride
one person’s beautiful object is somebody else’s kitsch. Taste can also change from one decade to another—yesterday’s charm is derided today as junk.
If you describe a work as kitsch,you mean it is gaudy and has a bad taste.
If you deride someone or something, you say that they are stupid or have no value. [V n] [Formal]
Opposition MPs derided the Government's response to the crisis...
反對黨議員嘲弄政府針對危機作出的反應(yīng)。
仿寫：The populace deride his work as kitsch.
6.Roundabout
Sometimes you will tap a vein of eloquence or racial memory that gives your writing a depth it could never attain on its own. Let me illustrate what I mean by a roundabout route.
If you do or say something in a roundabout way, you do not do or say it in a simple, clear, and direct way. [usu ADJ n]
We made a bit of a fuss in a roundabout way.
我們拐彎抹角地發(fā)了點牢騷撩荣。
仿寫：She always likes to talk in a roundabout way.
復(fù)習：
weather
So I studied Governor Cross’s words to see how they had weathered the passage of time.
風化铣揉，腐蝕，褪色
Unpainted wooden furniture weathers to a grey colour...
沒有上漆的木制家具會褪成灰色餐曹。
替換：fade
REFLECTION
? In the previous section,Zinser suggests us not kowtowing to the readers but doing yourself.In this chapter,he says that we should do ourselves but don’t be strung along by the subjects that we want to write,such as sports and music.He thinks there is only one kind of English that is the good English.But how to achieve this?
? Firstly,we should avoid the breezy style and don’t be condescending.In order to behave casually,some writers might intend to use the cheap slang,shoddy sentences and windy philosophizing.But the truth is that it is much harder to read than the good English.
? But what is exactly the good English?It’s all about the taste.Zinser make an excellent metapher.He takes the taste of clothes as example.As we all know,we can only abtain the taste of colthes until we see a lot of the good styles and distill the essence of them.And so does the taste of a good writing.Learning from the masterpieces of good writers is a shortcut to achieve this.And finally we will find that a good writing taste always contains simplisity,rythem and using of after verbs and plain nouns and so on.
