Good Writing

May 2025 There are two senses in which writing can be good: it can sound good, and the ideas can be right.

2025 年 5 月 优秀的写作有两种意义：听起来不错，想法正确。

It can have nice, flowing sentences, and it can draw correct conclusions about important things.

它可以有优美、流畅的句子，并且可以对重要的事情得出正确的结论。

It might seem as if these two kinds of good would be unrelated, like the speed of a car and the color it's painted.

看起来这两种商品似乎是无关的，就像汽车的速度和车漆的颜色一样。

And yet I don't think they are.

但我不认为他们是。

I think writing that sounds good is more likely to

我认为听起来不错的写作更有可能

be right.

是对的。

So here we have the most exciting kind of idea: one that seems both preposterous and true.

因此，我们有一个最令人兴奋的想法：一个看起来既荒谬又真实的想法。

Let's examine it.

我们来检查一下。

How can this possibly be true?

这怎么可能是真的？

I know it's true from writing.

我从写作中知道这是真的。

You can't simultaneously optimize two unrelated things; when you push one far enough, you always end up sacrificing the other.

你不能同时优化两个不相关的事情；当你把其中一个推得足够远时，你最终总是会牺牲另一个。

And yet no matter how hard I push, I never find myself having to choose between the sentence that sounds best and the one

然而，无论我多么努力，我从来没有发现自己必须在听起来最好的句子和最好的句子之间做出选择

that expresses an idea best.

最能表达一个想法。

If I did, it would be frivolous to care how sentences sound.

如果我这样做了，那么关心句子的发音就太无聊了。

But in practice it feels the opposite of frivolous.

但实际上，这感觉与轻浮相反。

Fixing sentences that sound bad seems to help get the ideas right.

修正听起来不好的句子似乎有助于正确表达想法。

[ 1 ] By right I mean more than just true.

[ 1 ] 我所说的“正确”不仅仅是真实的。

Getting the ideas right means developing them well — drawing the conclusions that matter most, and exploring each one to the right level of detail.

获得正确的想法意味着很好地发展它们——得出最重要的结论，并以正确的细节程度探索每一个结论。

So getting the ideas right is

所以正确的想法是

not just a matter of saying true things, but saying the right true things.

不仅仅是说真话，而是说正确的真话。

How could trying to make sentences sound good help you do that?

尝试让句子听起来好听怎么能帮助你做到这一点呢？

The clue to the answer is something I noticed 30 years ago when I was doing the layout for my first book.

答案的线索是我 30 年前在为我的第一本书做布局时注意到的事情。

Sometimes when you're laying out text you have bad luck.

有时，当您布置文本时，您会运气不好。

For example, you get a section that runs one line longer than the page.

例如，您得到的部分比页面长一行。

I don't know what ordinary typesetters do

我不知道普通排字工做什么

in this situation, but what I did was rewrite the section to make it a line shorter.

在这种情况下，但我所做的是重写该部分以使其更短。

You'd expect such an arbitrary constraint to make the writing worse.

你可能会认为这样的任意限制会使写作变得更糟。

But I found, to my surprise, that it never did.

但令我惊讶的是，我发现它从来没有发生过。

I always ended up with something I liked better.

我总是得到我更喜欢的东西。

I don't think this was because my writing was especially careless.

我不认为这是因为我写得特别粗心。

I think if you pointed to a random paragraph in anything written by anyone and told them to make it

我想如果你指着任何人写的任何东西中的一个随机段落并告诉他们这样做

slightly shorter (or longer), they'd probably be able to come up with something better.

稍短（或更长），他们可能能够想出更好的东西。

The best analogy for this phenomenon is when you shake a bin full of different objects.

这种现象的最佳类比是当你摇晃装满不同物体的箱子时。

The shakes are arbitrary motions.

摇晃是任意动作。

Or more precisely, they're not calculated to make any two specific objects fit more closely together.

或者更准确地说，它们的计算目的并不是使任何两个特定对象更紧密地结合在一起。

And yet repeated shaking inevitably makes the objects discover brilliantly clever ways of packing themselves.

然而，反复摇晃不可避免地会让这些物体发现非常聪明的自我包装方式。

Gravity won't let them become less tightly packed, so any change has to be a change for the better.

重力不会让它们变得不那么紧密，所以任何改变都必须是变得更好。

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