原文&插畫(huà) | 飲冰患者

Technically in writing, 'Deadwood' refers to unnecessary words, phrases or any expanded verbiage. As we say well-chosen words add the meaning and power to your essay, however deadwood or clutter, or some editors call wasted word, gets in the way.?

Deadwood 很顯然是由兩個(gè)詞dead和wood組成，死亡的木頭，直接就可翻譯成自然界的枯木枝或朽木來(lái)用。不過(guò)在寫(xiě)作范疇內(nèi)，朽木還可表達(dá)另一個(gè)意思，即指代文章中不必要和多余的字眼或廢話。要是教授說(shuō)某段話是 Deadwood的話，就類似于 “老太太的裹腳布又臭又長(zhǎng)” 那種批評(píng)了。

How to recognise deadwood?

' For example, rather than simply writing because, since, or if, some students feel compelled to clutter their sentences with empty phrases. Here are some common ones: by virtue of the fact that, due to the fact that, for the simple reason that, inasmuch as, in light of fact that... ' (- Bridges to better writing)

一篇論文里哪些是朽木呢？在《Bridges to better writing》這本書(shū)里指出很多學(xué)生故意拖長(zhǎng)文章篇幅的現(xiàn)象，比如明明可以用 becasue, since 這些簡(jiǎn)明扼要的詞語(yǔ)表示“因?yàn)椤?，卻偏偏用什么 by viture of the fact that... 這些超長(zhǎng)詞組?；叵胱约簞傞_(kāi)始學(xué)寫(xiě)論文的日子，可不是嘛，有字?jǐn)?shù)要求又寫(xiě)不出來(lái)的話，就到處塞字眼兒，現(xiàn)在看來(lái)都是些沒(méi)啥實(shí)際用處的Deadwood，一堆朽木哈哈。