Whatever, wish everybody a happy new year!
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Empty Chair is saved for Liu Xiaobo |
诺贝尔和平奖网站上刊登了评委会主席亚格兰的颁奖致词。德国之声在此全文转载其中文版本。 |
The best blog post I read this morning—of many—is good. Very good, actually. It flows. It's fresh. It has a rhythm that drew me in and made me want to read every word. The ideas are thought-provoking.
But how much more enjoyable would it have been if I didn't have to reread certain sections to make sure I was getting the gist of things? How much better would the post be if I didn't hesitate at it's instead of its and there instead of they're? How much intended meaning and power was lost over a lack of subject-verb agreement or commas that might have been better placed?
Tripping, stumbling, and hesitating over misspelled words or ill-placed punctuation is like watching a TV show with a shaky cable signal or trying to talk while a cell phone connection is breaking up—the reader is jostled right out of the story the writer is telling.
This writer intentionally broke a lot of rules in his 1100-word article, and he broke them well. Sentence fragments clustered together as ideas to ponder, a long list of items without commas that symbolizes repetitive drivel, the same word repeated over and over in a few short sentences to pound in a point. Good stuff and well done, for the most part.
Some grammar and punctuation rules can—and should—be broken, when you know what the rules are and how to break them effectively. But the lack of solid proofreading in this piece is like cake without icing, pottery without glaze, or a fine piece of wood in need of a polish. The writer didn't step back and get his Eagle Eye on.
"Come on," you chortle. "It's hard to proofread your own work. And who notices anyway?"
Believe it or not, lots of people notice unless they're just scanning. And it's quite possible that many of those scanners might linger on every word you write if typos and bloopers and unintentionally-broken punctuation or grammar rules weren't making them stumble and wonder and lose their focus.
It doesn't matter whether you're a freelancer, a blogger, a student, or anyone who writes for any reason. Most of us don't have proofreaders or a skilled family member or friend to help us out on a regular basis. And if you're submitting work to an agent or publisher or a big blog for consideration, why let typos and mistakes clutter and cloud the brilliant work you want them to read?
Any time you write something, you want readers to enjoy and appreciate your masterpiece. It's your baby, an extension of yourself. Take good care of it.
Writing and editing is art. Proofreading is science.
So says Rushang Shah, President of Gramlee.com, an online editing service with editors behind the scenes constantly proofreading and copyediting. Rushang says that "all proofreading and copyediting involves the human element, and that's why computers cannot replace a proofreader."
Proofreading your own work can be challenging, it's true. You already know the story, you already have a picture in your mind of what to expect and, as a result, you tend to skim over words and groups of words. Plus, you know your own voice and, even if there are errors in your writing, you don't "hear" them or see them because you're in a hurry, and your mind fills in the blanks as you skim over things. You might be daydreaming—even if you're reading out loud.
If you have a system, though, proofreading can be like doing a quality check on an assembly line. It's just busy work, really, and not very creative at all. But it's so important.
1. Don't proofread until you're completely finished with the actual writing and editing. If you make major changes while proofreading, even if it's just within sentences, you're still in an artistic, creative mode, not a science mode.
2. Make sure you have no distractions or potential interruptions. Shut down email and social media, hide the cell phone, shut off the TV, radio, or music, and close the door. Print your document if you need to get away from the computer altogether.
3. Forget the content or story. Analyze sentence by sentence; don't read in your usual way. Focus on spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Work backwards, if that helps, or say the words and sentences out loud. Concentrate.
4. Make several passes for different types of errors. Try checking spelling and end punctuation on one pass, grammar and internal punctuation on another, and links or format on yet another pass. Develop a system.
5. Take notes. If you notice a format issue while checking spelling or if you need to look something up, make a quick note and come back to it so you don't lose your focus.
6. If you do make a last-minute change to a few words, be sure to check the entire sentence or even paragraph over again. Many errors are the result of changes made without adjusting other, related words.
7. Check facts, dates, quotes, tables, references, text boxes, and anything repetitive or outside of the main text separately. Focus on one element or several related aspects of your writing at a time.
8. Monitor yourself. If you find yourself drifting off and thinking about something else, go back over that section again. Try slapping your hand or tapping a foot in a rhythm as you examine each word and sentence out loud.
9. Get familiar with your frequent mistakes. Even the most expreienced writer mixes up their, they're, and there or too, two, and to. When I'm tried or writing fast, I right what I here in my mind and just get careless. Not a big deal. That's what proofreading is for. You caught those errors, didn't you?
10. Check format last. Every document has format, even an email, whether it's paragraph spacing, text wrap, indentations, spaces above and below a bullet list or between subheadings and text, and so on. Leave this for the end because contents may shift during handling.
You already know better than to rely on spell-check, so I won't belabor the point except to say that "wear form he untied stats" doesn't bother spell-check but it might get an American in trouble at a customs checkpoint.
Do you know basic comma rules, how to use a semi-colon, or when to use who or whom? You might have an excellent sense of what things should look like or sound like, especially if you're an avid reader, but if you don't know basic grammar and punctuation rules, proofreading might be guesswork, at best, with doubtful results, at worst. Why not make your life easier and your writing better? Take some time to learn basic rules from some online resources I consult when I need help:
Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips
Purdue Online Writing Lab: General Writing Resources
Oxford Dictionaries: Better Writing
You can also download a free copy of The Handy-Dandy Everybody's Guide to Proofreading over at my blog, Peaceful Planet.
Don't let mistakes tarnish your work of art, whether it's a research paper, a blog post, a query letter, or business communication. And remember, proofreading is not the same as writing and editing. It's not about creativity; it's a science that needs a system. Follow these tips and create your own system, and you'll have your Eagle Eye on in no time.
Leah McClellan is a freelance writer, copyeditor, proofreader, gardener, vegetarian, and animal lover who dreams of world peace and writes about communication at Peaceful Planet.
find stillness to cure the illness
找寻宁静来治愈疾病
"Silence is a source of great strength." ~Lao Tzu
"静是巨大力量的源泉。"——老子
It's a busy day, and you're inundated by non-stop emails, text messages, phone calls, instant message requests, notifications, interruptions of all kinds.
这是繁忙的一天,你被淹没在无休无止的电子邮件、短信、电话、即时信息要求、通知和各种各样的打断中。
The noise of the world is a dull roar that pervades every second of your life. It's a rush of activity, a drain on your energy, a pull on your attention, until you no longer have the energy to pay attention or take action.
这个世界的噪声是低沉的咆哮充斥了你生活中的每一秒钟。这是一种动的忙乱、一种对你能量的消耗和对你注意力的牵扯,它永不停息一直到你不再有精力去注意或采取行动。
It's an illness, this noise, this rush. It can literally make us sick. We become stressed, depressed, fat, burnt out, slain by the slings and arrows of technology.
这种噪声,还有这种忙乱,是一种疾病。它能真正地让我们患病,使我们变得紧张、抑郁、肥胖和精疲力竭,最后被现代技术的投石器和箭头残杀。
The cure is simple: it's stillness.
治疗的方法很简单:宁静。
Pause
暂停
Take a minute out of your busy day to do this little exercise: pause in the middle of all you have to do, all that's going on around you. Close your eyes, and sit still. Breathe in, and breathe out, and pay attention to your breath as it comes in and goes out. Just sit still, for about a minute.
在你繁忙的一天中花一分钟做个小练习:在你所有不得不做的事情和所有正围绕着你进行的事情中间暂停下来,闭上眼睛,安静地坐下来。吸气,然后呼气,当气体吸进去和呼出去时把注意力都集中在你的呼吸上。仅仅静静地坐着,坐大约一分钟。
This stillness might seem like inaction, which we're taught is a bad thing. It's lazy, it's passive, it's against our Puritan work ethic. And yet, this simple inaction can change our world.
也许这种静坐象是一种不作为,而不作为被告知是糟糕的事情。它是懒惰、消极的行为,是违背我们清教徒的工作规范的行为。然而事实是,这种不作为可以改变我们的世界。
Stillness calms us. It gives us a small oasis of quiet that allows us to hear our thoughts, that allows us to catch our breath, that gives us room to breathe at all. It is the antibody to the stress and rush we feel daily.
静坐可以使我们镇静下来,它能够给予我们一块小小的安静的绿洲,在那里我们可以倾听自己的思想,可以捕捉我们的呼吸。它能够给予我们一个空间完全地进行呼吸。它是我们日常感受到的压力和匆忙的抗体。
"Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat." ~Lao Tzu
"躁胜寒,静胜热"——老子
The Strength of Stillne
宁静的力量
Stillness has a calming effect on the world around us as well. By becoming still, we cause others to pause, to pay attention. Our quiet also quiets others. We set the mood for those who work and otherwise interact with us.
在这个世界上,在我们周围,静有一种镇静的效用。因为变得安静,我们会使其他人暂停下来,开始注意。我们的安静可以使其他人也安静下来。我们为那些工作的人们设定静的情绪,或者同我们一起相互影响以静下来。
When we rush and set a frenetic pace, it stresses others and inspires them to rush frenetically too. Stillness has the opposite effect. It slows the world down, allows us to focus, gives us time for contemplation, for what matters most.
当我们忙乱着和设定一种发狂的节奏时,这会带给他人压力并促使他们也发狂地忙乱起来。宁静却有着相反的作用,它使世界慢了下来,允许我们集中注意,给我们时间去沉思什么是最要紧的。
It takes strength to be still when others rush. It takes courage to be different, to go against the stream. But while others might think us weird at first, that's OK. Sometimes it's the weird ones that make the most difference. And soon, as our stillness inspires others to find stillness of their own, we won't be the weird ones — we'll be the ones with wisdom.
当其他人很忙乱时要想静下来是需要花力气的。它也需要勇气来做得不同于其他人,去逆潮流而行。如果最初其他人认为我们奇怪时,没有关系。有时候正是这些奇怪的行为才能创造出最不同的东西。很快,当我们的宁静开始激励他人去找寻他们自己的宁静时,我们就不是奇怪的人了——我们是智慧的人。
It takes strength to find stillness when the world around us is a chaos of activity, but it's a strength that's in us, and we need only to find it. Paradoxically, it's stillness that will allow us to find that strength. Be still, look within, and it'll be there.
当我们周围的世界是一种动的混乱状况时,要找寻宁静是需要力量的。但是这是一种在我们内心里的力量,我们所需要的只是找到这种力量。相反的是,正是宁静会使得我们找到这个力量。安静下来,向内寻找,力量就在那里。
Finding Stillness
找寻宁静
It's pretty simple, really, and you don't need me to tell you to do this: to find stillness, you just need to take the time to sit still, every day that you can.
这非常简单,真的,你不需要我来告诉你怎么做,要找寻宁静,你只需要花时间静静地坐下来,每天你都能找到宁静。
Find a time in the morning, when the world is still fairly quiet, to sit still. Don't do anything, don't plan your day, don't check email, don't eat. Just sit, and learn to be comfortable being still.
在早晨找一个时间,当世界还相对安静的时候,安静地坐着,不要做任何事,不要计划你一天的行动,不要检查你的邮件,也不要吃东西,仅仅坐着,学会怎样舒服地静坐不动。
In practice, we'll gradually find that comfort, and we'll become good at it. If mornings are no good, find time during your lunch break, or after work, or just before you go to bed.
事实上,我们会渐渐发现那种舒适的,我们还会变得擅长这种舒适地静坐。如果早晨不合适的话,在你午休时找找时间,或者下班后,或在你睡觉前。
Find a place to be still. It can be a chair in your house, or a front porch, or the roof. It can be a park bench, or the beach, or a path in the woods. Let this be a ritual that you come to look forward to.
找到一个地方适合你静坐。这样的地方可以是你房子里的一把椅子,或你屋子前的门廊,也可以是房顶上。公园里的长凳、海滩、或树林里的小径。让它成为一个习惯,这样你会变得期待去做它。
From this small place of stillness, calm will carry to the rest of your day, radiating like a soothing force. You'll be calmer throughout the day, and learn to find little pockets of stillness everywhere: when you first start your workday, when you are ready to sit down and create, when you're about to eat, when you are ready to exercise, during a meeting, even.
从这个宁静的小地方开始,平静会在一天中剩下的时间里跟随着你,就象一种安慰的力量在辐射着你。你在整整一天中都会镇静多了。学会四处去找寻这个宁静的小口袋吧,当你刚开始你的工作日时,当你准备坐下来创造时,当你要开始进食时,当你准备锻炼时,甚至,当你在开会中间时。
Practice, regularly. Practice, and learn. Practice stillness, and the stillness becomes a canvas upon which you can paint the masterpiece of your life.
有规律地练习吧。练习,然后学习。练习静坐,那么静坐会成为一块画布,在它上面你可以描绘出你自己生活的杰作。
"Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"让我们安静下来吧,那样我们或许可以听到上帝的耳语。"——拉尔夫.沃尔多.爱默生