我们会像说话一样写作吗? 关于语气的思考

好吧，我要把我说话的方式写在这篇博文中. 决定用你说话的方式来写作, 或者你选择的语气, 这取决于你写文章的背景和目的. 就在此时此地, my purpose is to reflect on the wide mysteries of our secret motives and natural instincts involved in expressing ourselves through writing. 这意味着你, 读者, 正在体验我脑海中浮现的想法吗, 没有很多的过滤. 然而，这对大多数学术写作来说并不正常. 稍后会详细介绍. Now I’m going to give you the “thesis” of sorts for this post: Your audience combined with your purpose determines the most appropriate tone for your writing.

第一个! 观众. The person or group of people that you expect will read your writing could change your mind about the tone you use (or, 你写作的声音是否像你说话的声音). Your audience could be your friends, your professors, a room full of classmates, or your grandma. You already know that when you write a card to your grandma for her birthday, you’ll be using a different tone than when you write your best friend a birthday card. 你可能对你奶奶不太正式, but you might at least use more proper language in her card and let yourself be more effusive with your language in your best friend’s card. 在你奶奶的卡片里, you’re less likely to write the way you normally talk than in your best friend’s card. (Unless, as my friend pointed out, your best friend is your grandma. 如果是这样的话，恭喜你. 你赢了.) The purpose is the same, but because your audience is different, your written tone changes. 发生这种事是很自然的，也是适当的.

You can use your speaking tendencies to intuitively decide how you should write to your audience. Think about it this way: you would also probably use different language to talk to your grandma about, 说, your day at school than you would if you were talking to your best friend. Your tone changes in speech just as it does in writing (linguistics calls this your register). So, one tip for deciding on a tone for a written piece is to ask yourself how you would talk in real life to the people that comprise your audience. In that sense, writing the way you talk can help you decide on your tone.

其次，写作的目的可以改变你的语气. If you’re making an argument in a paper that your professor will read, 你更有可能使用正式的, overtly academic words that you don’t typically use when you speak. 但是如果你是在给你的教授写一篇简短的反思文章, you might slip into a more natural tone that is closer to your speaking voice.  In this example, the audience is the same, but the purpose of your writing changes your tone. Considering your audience and your purpose together helps you make an informed choice of tone.

请不要误会我. “Overtly academic” does not mean using words that make you sound like Archibald from Veggie Tales. 呆板不等于聪明，但清晰更接近聪明. All I mean to 说 is that academic writing requests that you use some specialized terms that may not be part of your everyday vocabulary. 在你努力实现“学术语气”的过程中,” don’t waste your good thoughts on thesaurized words and tangled sentence structures. 保护他们. 清楚地与他们沟通.

Let’s look at a couple of examples from the introduction of this blog post that show what my choice of tone is. 我已经告诉过你，你在体验我的思想, 我在用对你说话的方式写信. 我的读者就是你，我的作家同行. 这意味着我可以用友好的语气说话. I use 人称代词 to establish this, like “I” and “you,” and I address you directly. My purpose, which I already stated, is to reflect on some thoughts about tone in writing. Since these are my thoughts as they appear in my head, not all of them are complete sentences. For example, in the first paragraph I wrote,“稍后会详细介绍” as a fragment. 我还使用了一些非正式的语言，比如“各种各样”和“很多”.非正式用语, 支离破碎的句子, 人称代词结合起来形成对话语气. 这是适合这篇博文的, 因为我写作的背景(我的读者和目的).

These elements aren’t appropriate choices for an academic paper, though. 如果我用碎片写下一篇研究论文, 人称代词, 还有像“很多”这样的短语,“我的教授可能会因为我语法错误而责备我, 多嘴, and he or she might think I wasn’t taking the assignment very seriously. Because the context changes, my tone also needs to change to fit the situation. I would need to use complete sentences that related logically to each other, 消除人称代词, and choose words that were concise instead of vague (how are you supposed to know how much “a whole lot” is?). 这些风格的选择创造了一个令人尊敬的, academic tone that professors are more likely to appreciate in a research paper.

下次你写论文的时候，考虑一下你的背景. 你在给谁写信? 你会怎么跟他们说话? 你给他们写信是为了什么? Use your answers to these questions to choose an appropriate tone. You can find more tips for choosing and accomplishing a suitable tone in this article from Walden University, 这张来自出版社.com.

记住，这是一个决定! Whether or not it is a conscious one, you make a choice about the tone of your writing. 你是作者. Recognizing your audience and your purpose and how they combine will help you intentionally choose an appropriate tone to use in conveying your ideas. This makes you an effective writer, attentive to your audience and firm in your purpose.

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Livia Swan is from just about everywhere, but she spent most of her childhood in Singapore. She is studying to be a Spanish teacher because she loves language – that’s also why she’s at the 写作工作室. There are a multitude of ways to use words to articulate one idea, even just within English. She is excited to read your ideas and help you represent your mind on the page so that your reader understands exactly the same thought that you mean to write down. 当她不写作或读书的时候, 说实话, 不是经常), 她在烘焙或编织，或者其他像奶奶一样的行为, 和她最好的朋友在一起. 她等不及想见你了! 她很乐意学习你如何使用单词，并帮助你好好使用它们.