硅谷教父的写作秘诀：写完后把每段话砍掉10%，思考力飙升100%！

过去,写作是可选项,被视为少部分人的特殊技能;现在,写作是必选项,本质已演变为普通人当掌握的思考工具。

把写作视为方法,锻炼自己的思考,发展自己的思想。

ai时代,写作与不写作的分化(你是只有海量信息输入,和貔貅一样,还是有所输出),被paul graham视为ai时代思考者与不思考者的阶层分化。对此,我100%认同。

那么,对于此种定义的“写作”,其好坏的衡量标准自然不同于其他定义下的写作。刚瞌睡就有人递枕头,几个小时前,paul graham刚发表了他的最新杂文,主题就是:good writing。

pg的杂文中,“好文章首先要好听” 这个观点我是坚信并且一直在践行的(从小朗读课文几小时的我们应该感触极深),但pg对此主题的思考相当深入,有利于我们把一手感性经验深化为why驱动的深刻认知,从而更好转化为行动:写出 好听的文章!

感触极深的另一技巧:“删减一行”暴力压缩法。pg在排版时(你看,亲自给自己的文章排版,这种操作性细节多么重要),为了把段落压短一行而重写,结果文本不仅更精炼,还更对味。限制和约束并不会削弱内容,反而强迫作者删掉赘余、强化重点。

本文我已经读了好几遍,真·思想咖啡也☕!

我会阅读5678遍,推荐你也这么做。🤗

祝阅读愉快~

good writing

author: paul graham
date: may 24, 2025

There are two senses in which writing can be good: it can sound good, and the ideas can be right. It can have nice, flowing sentences, and it can draw correct conclusions about important things. 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. And yet I don't think they are. I think writing that sounds good is more likely to be right.

写作之所以称得上“好”,有两个层面:一是文字 听起来优美流畅,二是其中的 观点正确无误。文章可以有优美流畅的句子,也可以对重要的事物得出正确的结论。乍看之下,这两种“好”似乎毫不相干,就像一辆车的速度和它的漆色没有关系。然而,我并不这么认为。我认为,

读起来顺畅悦耳的文章更有可能观点正确。

So here we have the most exciting kind of idea: one that seems both preposterous and true. Let's examine it. How can this possibly be true?

由此,我们得出了最令人大感兴趣的一种想法:它看起来荒谬绝伦,却又真实可信。我们来仔细探究一下:这怎么可能是真的呢?

I know it's true from writing. You can't simultaneously optimize two unrelated things; when you push one far enough, you always end up sacrificing the other. And yet no matter how hard I push, I never find myself having to choose between the sentence that sounds best and the one that expresses an idea best. If I did, it would be frivolous to care how sentences sound. But in practice it feels the opposite of frivolous. Fixing sentences that sound bad seems to help get the ideas right.[1]

根据我的写作经验,我知道它是真的。你不可能同时将两个不相关的目标都做到极致;当你把其中一个推进到某个极端时,总免不了要牺牲另一个。可是不管我多么极端地打磨文字,我从未发现自己需要在“听起来最好的句子”和“最能表达思想的句子”之间做取舍。如果真出现那种情况,那么在意句子的音韵就成了一件轻浮的事了。可实际上,情况恰恰相反,一点也不轻浮。修改那些听上去别扭的句子,似乎有助于让想法也变得正确起来。[1]

By right I mean more than just true. Getting the ideas right means developing them well — drawing the conclusions that matter most, and exploring each one to the right level of detail. So getting the ideas right is not just a matter of saying true things, but saying the right true things.⁠⁠

我所说的“正确”不只是指事实真实。“把思想表达正确”,意味着把它们充分展开——引出最重要的结论,并将每一点结论探究到恰当的细节深度。所以,说对思想“正确”,不只是陈述真实的内容,而是要 说出正确且重要的真相。

How could trying to make sentences sound good help you do that? The clue to the answer is something I noticed 30 years ago when I was doing the layout for my first book. Sometimes when you're laying out text you have bad luck. For example, you get a section that runs one line longer than the page. I don't know what ordinary typesetters do in this situation, but what I did was rewrite the section to make it a line shorter. You'd expect such an arbitrary constraint to make the writing worse. But I found, to my surprise, that it never did. I always ended up with something I liked better.

让句子听起来优美怎么可能帮助你做到这一点呢?这个问题的线索来自于我30年前为自己的第一本书做版面排版时注意到的一件事。有时候,你在排版文本时会碰上运气不好的情况。比如,有一节内容比一页纸刚好多出一行。我不知道一般的排版人员在这种情况下会怎么办,但我当时的做法是 把这一节重写一下,让它缩短一行。你可能会认为这样随意加个限制会让文章变糟。然而让我惊讶的是,情况从未如此——最后我总能得到一个我更满意的版本。

I don't think this was because my writing was especially careless. I think if you pointed to a random paragraph in anything written by anyone and told them to make it slightly shorter (or longer), they'd probably be able to come up with something better.

我并不觉得这是因为我原先写得特别马虎。我想,如果你随便指着任何人写的文章里的一个段落,让他们把它稍微缩短(或拉长)一点,他们大概都能改出一个更好的版本。

The best analogy for this phenomenon is when you shake a bin full of different objects. The shakes are arbitrary motions. Or more precisely, they're not calculated to make any two specific objects fit more closely together. And yet repeated shaking inevitably makes the objects discover brilliantly clever ways of packing themselves. Gravity won't let them become less tightly packed, so any change has to be a change for the better.[2]

对于这种现象,最好的比喻是你摇晃一个装满各种物件的箱子。摇晃本身是随机的动作。更精确地说,摇晃并不是特意为了让某两件特定的物品贴得更紧。然而,不断地摇晃不可避免地会使箱子里的物件找到绝妙的方法把自己重新排列得更加紧凑。重力不会允许它们变得更松散,因此每一次变化只能朝着更紧密的方向改进。[2]

So it is with writing. If you have to rewrite an awkward passage, you'll never do it in a way that makes it less true. You couldn't bear it, any more than gravity could bear things floating upward. So any change in the ideas has to be a change for the better.

⁠⁠写作也是如此。如果你不得不重写一段拗口别扭的文字,你绝不会让它变得更不真实。你不可能容忍,正如重力不可能容忍物体向上飘一样。所以,思想上发生的任何变化必然是往更好的方向调整。

It's obvious once you think about it. Writing that sounds good is more likely to be right for the same reason that a well-shaken bin is more likely to be tightly packed. But there's something else going on as well. Sounding good isn't just a random external force that leaves the ideas in an essay better off. It actually helps you to get them right.

这个道理一想就通。听起来顺畅悦耳的文章更有可能是正确的,其道理正如充分摇晃过的箱子更有可能被紧密地装满一样。不过,还有另一层作用:句子优美流畅并不只是一个外在的随机因素,碰巧让文章的思想变得更好——它实际上在 帮助你把思想理顺、使之正确。

The reason is that it makes the essay easier to read. It's less work to read writing that flows well. How does that help the writer? Because the writer is the first reader. When I'm working on an essay, I spend far more time reading than writing. I'll reread some parts 50 or 100 times, replaying the thoughts in them and asking myself, like someone sanding a piece of wood, does anything catch? Does anything feel wrong? And the easier the essay is to read, the easier it is to notice if something catches.

原因在于:它让文章更容易阅读。阅读一篇行文流畅的文章要省力得多。这对作者有什么帮助呢? 因为作者本身就是第一读者。当我在写一篇文章时,花在阅读上的时间远远多于写作。我会把某些部分重读五十遍甚至一百遍,在脑海中反复回放其中的思路,并问自己——就像在用砂纸打磨木头时那样——有没有什么地方卡住了?有没有什么地方感觉不对劲?而文章越容易阅读,就越容易察觉哪里有“卡顿”。 ⁠⁠

So yes, the two senses of good writing are connected in at least two ways. Trying to make writing sound good makes you fix mistakes unconsciously, and also helps you fix them consciously; it shakes the bin of ideas, and also makes mistakes easier to see. But now that we've dissolved one layer of preposterousness, I can't resist adding another. Does sounding good do more than just help you get the ideas right? Is writing that sounds good inherently more likely to be right? Crazy as it may seem, I think that's true too.

总之,好的写作的这两层含义至少通过两种方式联系在一起。 努力让文章读起来优美顺畅,会在无意识中促使你修正错误,同时也帮助你有意识地纠正错误;这既相当于在摇晃想法之箱,又让错误更容易被发现。不过,我们已经揭去了表面看似荒谬的一层,我忍不住再加上一层。让文章读起来优美是否不只是帮助你理清思想那么简单?听起来顺畅的文章本身是否天生就更有可能是正确的? 这想法听上去也许很疯狂,但我认为它也是对的。

Obviously there's a connection at the level of individual words. There are lots of words in English that sound like what they mean, often in wonderfully subtle ways. Glitter. Round. Scrape. Prim. Cavalcade. But the sound of good writing depends even more on the way you put words together, and there's a connection at that level too.

显然,在具体词语的层面上就存在这种联系。英文中有许多单词在声音上听起来就带有它们所指之物的意味,往往是以微妙而奇妙的方式呈现出来的。Glitter,Round,Scrape,Prim,Cavalcade......但是,一篇好文章的悦耳程度更取决于你将词语组合的方式,而在这个层面上也存在这种关联。

When writing sounds good, it's mostly because it has good rhythm. But the rhythm of good writing is not the rhythm of music, or the meter of verse. It's not so regular. If it were, it wouldn't be good, because the rhythm of good writing has to match the ideas in it, and ideas have all kinds of different shapes. Sometimes they're simple and you just state them. But other times they're more subtle, and you need longer, more complicated sentences to tease out all the implications.

⁠⁠一篇文章读起来顺畅悦耳,多半是因为它有良好的节奏感。不过,优秀文章的节奏并不同于音乐的节奏,也不是诗歌的韵律——它不会那么整齐划一。倘若文章的节奏过于整齐,反而不会成为好文章,因为好文章的节奏必须契合文中的思想,而思想的形态千差万别。有时思想很简单,你只需直截了当地陈述即可。但有时思想更加微妙,你就需要更长、更复杂的句子来将其中隐含的意义全部梳理出来。

An essay is a cleaned up train of thought, in the same way dialogue is cleaned up conversation, and a train of thought has a natural rhythm. So when an essay sounds good, it's not merely because it has a pleasing rhythm, but because it has its natural one. Which means you can use getting the rhythm right as a heuristic for getting the ideas right. And not just in principle: good writers do both simultaneously as a matter of course. Often I don't even distinguish between the two problems. I just think Ugh, this doesn't sound right; what do I mean to say here?[3]

一篇文章是一系列思路的整理,正如对话是对闲谈的整理一样,而一连串的思路自有其自然的节奏。因此,当一篇文章读起来朗朗上口时,并不只是因为它有令人愉悦的节奏,而是因为它拥有 自己天然的节奏。这意味着你可以把调整好文章的节奏作为理顺思想的一条启发式途径。而且这不只是原理上的说法:优秀的作家往往自然而然地同时做好这两件事。我自己往往甚至不将这两个问题区分开来。我只是心想:唔,这听起来不对劲;我在这里到底想表达什么呢?[3]

The sound of writing turns out to be more like the shape of a plane than the color of a car. If it looks good, as Kelly Johnson used to say, it will fly well.

结果证明,文章给人的听觉印象与其说像汽车的颜色,不如说更像 飞机的外形。正如凯利·约翰逊常说的那样:“如果它看起来好,它就会飞得好。”

This is only true of writing that's used to develop ideas, though. It doesn't apply when you have ideas in some other way and then write about them afterward — for example, if you build something, or conduct an experiment, and then write a paper about it. In such cases the ideas often live more in the work than the writing, so the writing can be bad even though the ideas are good. The writing in textbooks and popular surveys can be bad for the same reason: the author isn't developing the ideas, merely describing other people's. It's only when you're writing to develop ideas that there's such a close connection between the two senses of doing it well.

不过,需要注意的是,以上论断只适用于 通过写作来发展想法 的情形。当你的想法是以其他方式产生,然后事后再把它们写出来时,上述关联就不适用了——例如,你先造出了某样东西,或者进行了某项实验,然后再写论文来描述它。在这种情况下,想法往往更多地体现在实际的成果里,而非文章的文字中,所以尽管想法是好的,写出来的文章却可能很糟糕。出于同样的原因,教材和通俗综述类文章的文字质量常常不高:作者并没有在用写作来发展自己的思想,只是在描述他人的思想。只有当你在通过写作来发展想法时,写得好的这两层含义才会如此紧密地联系在一起。

Ok, many people will be thinking, this seems plausible so far, but what about liars? Is it not notoriously possible for a smooth-tongued liar to write something beautiful that's completely false?

好吧,可能很多人会想:以上说的貌似有理,可是那些骗子呢? 众所周知,一个能言善辩的骗子完全可以把彻头彻尾的虚假内容写得美妙动人,对吗?

It is, of course. But not without method acting. The way to write something beautiful and false is to begin by making yourself almost believe it. So just like someone writing something beautiful and true, you're presenting a perfectly-formed train of thought. The difference is the point where it attaches to the world. You're saying something that would be true if certain false premises were. If for some bizarre reason the number of jobs in a country were fixed, then immigrants really would be taking our jobs.

当然可以。但前提是你自己得先像演员一样入戏。要把虚假的东西写得优美,方法就是先让自己几乎相信它。所以,和写出优美且真实内容的人一样,你也是在呈现一段完美成型的思路。不同之处在于这段思路与现实衔接的点。你所陈述的内容,如果某些错误的前提变成真,那么这些内容本身也就会是真的。举个例子:假如出于某种离奇的原因,一个国家的就业岗位数是固定不变的,那么移民的确就是在抢我们的饭碗。

So it's not quite right to say that better sounding writing is more likely to be true. Better sounding writing is more likely to be internally consistent. If the writer is honest, internal consistency and truth converge.

因此,直接说“听起来更好的文章更可能真实”并不准确。准确的说法是:听起来更好的文章,其内部逻辑往往更严密。如果作者是诚实的,那么内部一致性最终会和真实趋于一致。

But while we can't safely conclude that beautiful writing is true, it's usually safe to conclude the converse: something that seems clumsily written will usually have gotten the ideas wrong too.

但是,我们无法有把握地断言优美的文笔就保证内容真实,不过相反的结论倒是通常成立:一篇看起来写得很笨拙的文章,其思想通常也出了问题。

Indeed, the two senses of good writing are more like two ends of the same thing. The connection between them is not a rigid one; the goodness of good writing is not a rod but a rope, with multiple overlapping connections running through it. But it's hard to move one end without moving the other. It's hard to be right without sounding right.

的确,写作的这两种“好”更像是同一根东西的两端。它们之间的联系并非僵硬不变;写作的妙处不像一根直挺挺的杆子,而更像一条绳索,有多股重叠的联系贯穿其中。而要移动绳索的一端,很难不牵动另一端。要做到观点正确却读起来别扭,是很困难的。

notes/注释

[1] The closest thing to an exception is when you have to go back and insert a new point into the middle of something you've written. This often messes up the flow, sometimes in ways you can never quite repair. But I think the ultimate source of this problem is that ideas are tree-shaped and essays are linear. You inevitably run into difficulties when you try to cram the former into the latter. Frankly it's suprising how much you can get away with. But even so you sometimes have to resort to an endnote.

最接近例外的情况是:当你不得不回过头在已经写好的内容中间插入一个新的观点时。这样往往会打乱文章的流畅程度,有时甚至会破坏到无法完全修复的地步。不过,我认为这个问题的根源在于思想的结构是树状的,而文章是线性的。当你试图把树状的思想硬塞进线性的文章结构中时,必然会遇到困难。坦白说,我们居然能在很大程度上做到这一点,实在令人惊讶。即便如此,有时你还是不得不诉诸于加一个文末注释。

[2] Obviously if you shake the bin hard enough the objects in it can become less tightly packed. And similarly, if you imposed some huge external constraint on your writing, like using alternating one and two syllable words, the ideas would start to suffer.

当然,如果你把箱子摇得足够猛烈,里面的物件也可能不会那么紧密地堆叠在一起。类似地,如果你对写作施加某种过于严苛的外部限制,比如要求单音节词和双音节词交替使用,那么文章中的思想就会开始受到影响。

[3] Bizarrely enough, this happened in the writing of this very paragraph. An earlier version shared several phrases in common with the preceding paragraph, and the repetition bugged me each time I reread it. When I got annoyed enough to fix it, I discovered that the repetition reflected a problem in the underlying ideas, and I fixed both simultaneously.

说来也怪,这种情况恰好就发生在我写这一段时。之前的一个版本中,这一段文字与前一段有好几处短语是重复的,每次我重读时,这种重复都让我感到别扭不已。当我烦躁到一定程度决心改掉这些重复时,我发现这些重复实际上反映了底层思想上的一个问题,于是我把措辞和思想一起纠正了。

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