长句子的目的性
引自http://ansipen.com/zuowen/trick1conciseandrich.html网友yc1206问：
请问针对GRE的作文，语言的精练是否还有必要呢？ 感觉许多时候本来就没多少话可说，如果再精练字数上就太过不去了。
Apple的答复：
yc1206,
Good question! Personally speaking, I prefer simplicity to complexity - a short sentence to a long one, a familiar word to a far-fetched, a concrete example to an abstract explanation, an effective verb to a fancy adverb; or Ms. Black, my writing professor from graduate school, would say "good English is simple English". "Wait", you'd say, "didn't you just write a fairly long sentence"? Ooops...I guess I did:-). You know why? To catch and sustain your attention.
Have you ever noticed that reporters always write complicated and long English? Some people say they do that just to show off. Well, that allegation may be true but a better reason can be that reporters simply like to view their short news stories as powerful magnets, once they catch a reader, they are determined to glue him or her to their stories. They don't like short sentences because short sentences mean more "stops", more "stops" lead to higher possibilities for readers to switch from one story to another, and this is something a hard-working reporter doesn't want to see.
Now do you see the resemblance between news writing and GRE essay writing and hopefully this has cleared your confusion and explained why I recommend fancy words and complex sentences in your GRE writing? Just to keep GRE writing graders hooked to your essay!
However, writing in a "more complicated way" is totally different from piling up words just to keep an article long. Simple or not simple, one rule remains the same; if a word, a sentence, or a paragraph does not and can not serve the purpose of keeping your reader more informed, conveying your ideas more sufficiently, making your argument more convincingly, then that word, sentence, or paragraph should not be there.
So how to write a long essay then? A trick to keep your article long in a good way is to explain why you claim what you have claimed in your writing by always providing a detailed description of your statement, a solid example, a further clarification, or a thoughtful extension.
So if you replay what you have just read, you will notice that I spend 5 paragraphs to tell you my view. But I don't have to. I can simply reply to you with a short message like this:
Hi, yc1206,
Although I believe good English is simple English, due to the nature of GRE writing which requires you to write about 300~400 words to discuss an issue probably already boring to the graders but important to your score, you should write long , complicated, and useful sentences to keep graders locked in your essay once they start reading the first sentence of your essay so that they can appreciate your analytical ability to the fullest and therefore give you a desirable score.
woh...that's extreeeeeeemly long:-) It is definitely not good English but hopefully by now you have got the point. If not, drop me another line:-)
Apple 好文啊！感觉老外是比较有幽默感，这点很值得学习。 who is apple ? preminent ESSAY writer!! according to apple, we should write complicated and detailed articles ,but we should also be aware of not
piling up useless words or sentences to make up a long one.
by the way, what is "drop me another line"? thank you I think "drop me another line" means write another eamil to me。
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