很久以前见过一本《英文宝典》，中国展望出版社（不知今天是否还在）影印香港海天书楼1984年10月版中译本（汪永祺译）。原书名很直白：怎么写，怎么说，怎么想（How To Write, Speak, and Think More Effectively），作者是奥地利裔美国人Rudolf Flesch。Effectively其实就是简洁。最近收拾英文写作的书，无意间看见了“古老”的英文版（1946年初版）——扉页有一个明晃晃的公式：

头一章更有意思：让我们从中文学起（Let’s starts with Chinese）——用中文的方式说母语，你就能不费气力地养成简洁和生动的说话习惯。（If you had a smattering of Chinese, you could reach yourself simple English in no time. You could apply the Chinese way of talking to your own language, and without much effort you would form the habit of terse, clear, picturesque talk.）

作者说，“中文的好处是没有文法，没有字形变化，没有格，没有人称，没有性别，没有单复数，没有比较级，没有时态，没有口气，没有语态，没有不定式，没有分词、动名词，没有不规则动词，也没有冠词……”（Chinese, however, is known as a"grammarless" tongue. The list of the things it does not haveis amazing: it has no inflections, no cases, no persons, no genders, nonumbers, no degrees, no tenses, no voices, no moods, no infinitives, noparticiples, no gerunds, no irregular verbs, and no articles.）译者在这话后面加了一句感想：“西方的古圣先贤本领还真不小，也难为他们对咬文嚼字居然相想出了这一大套花样。把这些文法用词都摆在一起，要它们看起来不一样，不会使人张冠李戴，倒真不是件容易的事。”可今天的官样中文却套了太多的政治语法和政治逻辑，太多的“专用名词”和句式……大概需要反过来从英文去学失去的简洁了——人民的日报如果学会了简洁，大概能省下90%的纸钱；CC的TV学会了简洁，多余的时间能挣好多广告费呢。

RF还在正文前提出了25条简洁写作的法则（25 Rules of Effective Writing）：

1.Write about people, things, and facts.

2.Write as you talk.

3.Use contractions.

4.Use the first person.

5.Quote what was said.

6.Quote what was written.

7.Put yourself in the reader's place.

8.Don't hurt the reader's feelings.

9.Forestall misunderstandings.

10.Don't be too brief.

11.Plan a beginning, middle, and end.

12.Go from the rule to the exception, from the familiar to the new.

13.Use short names and abbreviations.

14.Use pronouns rather than repeating nouns.

15.Use verbs rather than nouns.

16.Use the active voice and a personal subject.

17.Use small, round figures.

18.Specify. Use illustrations, cases, examples.

19.Start a new sentence for each new idea.

20.Keep your sentences short.

21.Keep your paragraphs short.

22.Use direct questions.

23.Underline for emphasis.

24.Use parentheses for casual mention.

25.Make your writing interesting to look at.