“我從來沒聽說過，我也從來沒那樣教過”，一位中國的英語老師曾經(jīng)對我說。當(dāng)時我們在討論一個我所謂的關(guān)于書面英語的“小問題”。二十世紀(jì)六十年代時，我的老師們把這些小問題叫做“書面英語的運作機制”。今天，我們來討論一下為什么寫英文時這些小問題如此重要，以及亞洲作者們?nèi)绾文軌蚩焖偬岣咚麄兊挠⑽膶懽魉?。我們將特別談到大寫、標(biāo)點、字距，并且會討論在科技論文寫作時如何正確使用專有名詞和中英文字體。最后，我們將討論過長的句子以及與之相關(guān)的問題，也就是句子中分號的用法。之后，我們也將會對非英語母語作者寫作時遇到的其他幾個相關(guān)問題進行解答。
例如，羅莉，我的一個侄女，最近跟我說，“如果有人給我一份錯誤很多的簡歷，我肯定不愿意去雇用這個人”。很多簡歷中都存在問題，但是一些常見的錯誤是有辦法避免的。今天，我們就介紹一些簡便的方法。
這些小問題包括大寫、標(biāo)點和字距（即英文書寫中空格的用法）。曾經(jīng)有人告訴我，中國古代的作者們在寫作時不使用任何空格或標(biāo)點。最近我讀到，在二十世紀(jì)初期，當(dāng)那些從海外學(xué)習(xí)歸國的孩子們開始在中文中使用標(biāo)點時，很多中國父母們感到難以理解。如今時代變了，我曾經(jīng)教過不同年級的學(xué)生，我也去過中國大陸的一些小學(xué)，我能想象得到要教小學(xué)生們這些“小問題”有多么困難，尤其是教英語本身就很難了。下面我就來解釋一下。
時間回到1961年，當(dāng)我還是美國加州一個在上三年級的男孩時，我的老師楊小姐，和今天中國的老師們一樣，跟我強調(diào)說手寫的字應(yīng)該是同樣間距、對齊并且前后一致的，當(dāng)我們在電腦上打字時，我們也該記住這些在小學(xué)時學(xué)到的規(guī)則。作為一個專業(yè)編輯，我發(fā)現(xiàn)我看到的一部分論文，光是調(diào)整其中的空格問題就需要花費相當(dāng)多的工作量。下面是一些簡單的規(guī)則，你們可以在寫作中使用到，能使你的寫作水平看起來有巨大的提升。下面的例句中，正確的和錯誤的用法都將用粗體表示：
[ 句號或逗號前一定不要加空格。句號之后加一個（現(xiàn)在的習(xí)慣）或兩個（以前的習(xí)慣）空格，但是同一篇文章中不要兩種方式混用。一對括號的前后各加一個空格，但是句號和逗號前不要加空格。引用文章時仍要遵守這些規(guī)則。（注：例句請見英文部分）]
大寫是一個類似的問題，這里給出一些簡單的規(guī)則和例子。
[ 使用大寫有很多特殊的規(guī)則，有幾條很容易被亞洲作者忽略。專有名詞指的是特定人物，地點，或物品的名稱，需要大寫。普通名詞不是特指，不需要大寫。很多非英語母語作者在列出多個專有名詞時會出錯。比如，列舉多個省份的時候，province這個詞是不大寫的。（注：例句請見英文部分）]
另一點需要強調(diào)的是，當(dāng)列出省份、關(guān)鍵詞或其他任何東西的時候，作者需要注意，除非有其他順序要求，否則都應(yīng)該按字母順序進行排列。因此，我們通常會這么寫，“the cities of Beijing and Tianjin” 而非 “the cities of Tianjin or Beijing”。
中文字體，比如宋體和明朝字體，不應(yīng)該與英文混雜。這些通常頻繁出現(xiàn)于括號，逗號和符號里面。盡管可能這些問題看起來很不起眼，卻給編輯帶來格式和間距方面的大量問題。簡而言之，字體不同，占據(jù)的位置也不一樣，看起來會有差別。例如：
Time New Roman font: ,./;<:>?+_)(*&^%$#@!°C and I, II, III, IV, and Cambria Math, ①, ②, ③
宋體：，。、；《：》？+——）（*&……%￥#@！℃ 和 ①，②，③，Ⅰ，Ⅱ，Ⅲ，Ⅳ
由上可見，中文里的括號（宋體）增加的間距，沒有相應(yīng)地在英文字體中顯現(xiàn)出來。再仔細看看這些括號就能發(fā)現(xiàn)其中的差別。這就是英文中的空格為什么重要的一個原因。此外還需注意兩個小問題：在使用Times New Roman字體時，羅馬數(shù)字由多個字母組成，比如III要鍵入三個I；而使用宋體時，則只有一個字符Ⅲ。
在這部分結(jié)束之前，我們再來討論兩個與標(biāo)點符號和句子結(jié)構(gòu)有關(guān)的問題：長句子和分號的使用。分號的使用方式有多種，我們主要談?wù)劮痔栐诰渥又械挠梅?，而不涉及圖表標(biāo)題。在句子中，分號通常用來分開兩個“獨立的子句”。一個獨立的子句可以獨立成為一個句子；此處句子中，我用分號來表示兩個句子如何通過一個分號進行連接。當(dāng)一個作者需要引用其他人的研究時，使用分號通常比較方便；使用分號可以允許我們將一篇研究論文中的兩個甚至三四個觀點一同引用，如Smith and Gao (2014)——這里我們引用一篇假想的文獻作為例子。
最后，這里給出一個長句，它的長度實在是過長了。This is an example of a run-on sentence because a run-on sentence is one that never seems to end and you should not use a run-on sentence like this sentence because even though you may join words with conjunctions and the word “and” your readers will eventually get lost in the long and complex sentence that you are trying to write because it never seems to end and just goes on and on forever so you should keep your sentences to where they only provide one idea for each sentence.
科學(xué)期刊會非常樂意拒絕審閱一篇存在太多這些“小問題”的論文。因為編輯不得不花好幾個小時來修改論文中的空格及其他小錯誤，以及替換中文字符。如果你能避免這種類型的錯誤，你的論文將更有可能被期刊送去評審。
此短文由LetPub美國總公司的科學(xué)編輯撰寫，英文原文如下：
How to Avoid Common Errors with English:Part I
“I’ve never heard that. I’ve never taught that,” one Chinese teacher of English once told me. We were discussing what I call “The Little Things” of written English. My teachers in the 1960s called the little things, “the mechanics of written English.” Today, we plan to discuss why little things are important when writing English and how Asian writers of English may be able to rapidly improve their English. Specifically, we will discuss capitalization, punctuation, and spacing. In addition, we want to discuss the use of proper nouns as well as English and Chinese fonts in scientific research papers. Lastly, we will discuss sentences that are too long (run-on sentences) and the related topic, the use of semicolons in sentences. Later we will discuss several other writing-related topics that create problems for non-native speakers of English.
For example, a niece of mine, Lori, recently told me, “If I found a resume with many errors, I definitely would not hire that job applicant.” While many resumes have errors, there are ways to avoid common errors. Today, we will find simple ways to avoid those errors.
The little things are capitalization, punctuation, and spacing (or the use of spaces in writing English). I’m told that ancient Chinese writers used no spacing or punctuation. Recently, I read that Chinese parents in the early 1900s were upset when their children returned to China from studying overseas and started using punctuation with Chinese. Times have changed. However, having been a teacher at several levels as well as having visited elementary school classrooms in mainland China, I can imagine how difficult it is to teach “The Little Things” when simply teaching English to students is a challenge in itself. Please let me explain.
I will go back to 1961, as an American boy in third grade in California. My teacher, Miss Young, much like Chinese teachers today, emphasized that handwritten letters should be evenly spaced, well-aligned, and consistent. The rules we learned in elementary school should be remembered when typing on a computer. As a professional editor, a small majority of the papers I see need a considerable amount of work to clean them up simply by using spaces correctly. Here are a few simple guidelines that can be applied and may improve the look of your writing dramatically. Examples, both correct and incorrect, are shown in bold text.
Never use a space before a period or comma ,like this incorrect example. Use either one space (today’s style) or two spaces (an older style) after a period; but don’t mix the two styles in the same paper. Always use a space before and after parenthesis (such as shown correctly here) in a sentence but do not use a space before a period(this example is incorrect) . Similar rules apply when citing research papers such as Smith and Gao (2014) shown correctly here or at the end of a sentence shown here(Smith and Gao1999) with incorrect spacing in two places .
Capitalization is a similar issue. Here are a few simple rules and examples.
Many specific rules exist for capitalizing words, but here are a few rules that are most frequently overlooked by Asian writers of English. “Proper nouns” are the names of specific persons, places, and things (Beijing, Starship Enterprise, the People’s Republic of China, President Obama). Common nouns are not specific (city, spaceship, country, president). Many non-native speakers start making mistakes with lists of proper nouns. Correct examples would be Fujian Province and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with all words starting with capital letters. However, when multiple provinces are listed, the word “province” is not capitalized such as Fujian and Hunan provinces or Tibet and Xinjiang autonomous regions.
Another point should be emphasized when listing provinces, keywords, or any list. Writers should list things alphabetically unless another reason exists for some other sequence. Therefore, we usually write “the cities of Beijing and Tianjin” and not “the cities of Tianjin or Beijing”.
Chinese, Simsun, and MS Mincho fonts should also not be mixed with English. This occurs most frequently with parenthesis, commas, and symbols. While it may seem minor, this creates major problems for editors related to style and spacing. To say it simply, the different fonts take up different amounts of space and look different. For example:
Time New Roman font: ,./;<:>?+_)(*&^%$#@!°C and I, II, III, IV, and Cambria Math, ①, ②, ③
Simsun font: ，。、；《：》？+——）（*&……%￥#@！°C and ①,②,③,Ⅰ,Ⅱ,Ⅲ,Ⅳ
As you can see, Chinese punctuation (using a Simsun font) has added space that is not available with English fonts. Look again（at these Simsun parentheses）and you can see the difference. This is one reason the use of spaces is important with English. Also notice two other points. First, in the Times New Roman font, Roman numerals are typed as individual characters such as the three keystrokes needed to type III; in the Simsun font, the Roman numeral III is a single character, Ⅲ.
Let’s conclude this part of the discussion with two more topics related to punctuation and sentence structure, run-on sentences and the use of semicolons. While semicolons (;) are used in several ways, we are discussing sentences and not table or figure legends; bold text is used again to show examples. In sentences, semicolons are mostly used to separate two “independent clauses.” An independent clause can stand by a sentence separately; I’ve used a semicolon in this sentence to show how two sentences can be joined by a semicolon. This is often convenient when an author is citing someone else’s research; using a semicolon allows a person to join two or rarely three or four ideas and attribute those ideas to a single research paper such as Smith and Gao (2014), a fake reference cited here as an example.
Lastly,this is an example of a run-on sentence because a run-on sentence is one that never seems to end and you should not use a run-on sentence like this sentence because even though you may join words with conjunctions and the word “and” your readers will eventually get lost in the long and complex sentence that you are trying to write because it never seems to end and just goes on and on forever so you should keep your sentences to where they only provide one idea for each sentence. That is, that is a run-on sentence; it is far too long.
A scientific journal will gladly not review a paper that has many of these “l(fā)ittle” types of errors. This is because an editor would have to spend several hours carefully correcting the spacing and other little errors and removing the Simsun fonts. If you can avoid these types of errors, your paper will be much more likely to receive the review it really deserves by the journal editors.
（此文由LetPub編輯原創(chuàng)，轉(zhuǎn)載請注明來自LetPub中文官網(wǎng)：www.letpub.com.cn/index.php?page=sci_writing_51）
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