在进行学术论文写作时,几乎所有的学生和学者都会有一种向读者表达自己的想法而不是与他们进行交流的压力,从而使写作者走进写作误区。因此,社会学家 Howard S. Becker 出版了本书,告诉人们怎样克服这种压力,使写作论文的过程变得更简单易行。从20多年前第一版出版至今,成为所有研究领域从事学术研究和进行论文写作的人的指南。在新版中,作者除了保留第一版的许多有益內容之外,增加了电脑技术給写作著者带來的变化和挑战等內容。
"Sociologists often prefer locutions that leave the answer to that question unclear, largely because many of their theories don't tell them who is doing what. In many sociological theories, things just happen without anyone doing them"
"Sociologists' inability or unwillingness to make causal statements similarly leads to bad writing (...) Sociologists have many ways of describing how elements covary, most of them vacuous expressions hinting at what would like, but don't dare, to say."
"Should such a theorist use passive constructions to indicate the passivity of the human actors involved? That question requires two answers. The simpler is that few serious theories of society leave no room for agency. (...) passive constructions even hide the agency attributed to systems and struct"
"We agreed that the way to work with such a draft was to take notes on it, see what it contained, and then make an outline for another draft (..) Worrying about those faults might slow you down, keep you from saying something in one of the ways that would give you the clue you needed. Better edit aft"
"He showed how writers in the students' own field manipulated stylistic devices to sound "scientific", particularly noting how passive constructions could produce a facade of impersonality the investigator could hide behind"