本书旨在为非英语专业的学生提供一些实用的英文写作技巧。全书分十章，对文体格式，遣词造句、整篇作文，论文和书信，简历等的写作都做了详尽的阐述。它既用中文讲解，又保留了英语例句和范文，从而会使读者受益匪浅；这样的写作训练是全面的训练，不仅有助于提高语言水平，还有助于提高观察分析、逻辑思考的能力，有助于培养严谨的工作作风，这无疑对我国的英语教学工作是一大推进。
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Diction is the choice and use of words. The English language has a very large vocabulary: asmany as 400,000 words are collected in the Oxford English Dictionary. Of course no one knowsor need to use so many words. Only a small part of them are used by ordinary people for ordinarypurposes. Students learning to write should learn to use the words that are most useful and mostoften used to express themselves. Sometimes one may use the wrong words, but more often thewords one uses are not entirely wrong, but inappropriate, inexact, unidiomatic or uninteresting. Abasic knowledge of diction may be of help.
The words that are often used may be divided, from a stylistic point ot-view, into mree types:formal, common, and informal.
Formal words may also be called learned words, or literary words, or "big" words. Theymainly appear in fonrml writing, such as scholarly or theoretical works, political and legaldocuments, and formal lectures and addresses. Many such words contain three or more than threesyllables; most of them are of Greek or Latin origin. They are seldom used in daily conversation,except for special purposes. Here is a paragraph from a scholarly paper which contains some ofthe features of formal English:
There is nothing new in the recognition, within a given language, of a distinction between common usage and uses of the language for more restricted purposes and often enough, perhaps
characteristically, more elevated purposes. The monolithic nature of English is not questioned when literary essayists like Emerson contrast poetry and common speech. The latter is recognized in America to be the proper subject for the investigation of linguists who, however, now show some incipient inclination to investigate poetry, too, and other noncasual utterances in a given language.
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