弗爵爷:纠正同事的语病

I don’t know if anyone would be brave enough to take on Sir Alex Ferguson, who recently denied he planned to sell Wayne Rooney by saying: “There’s no issue between Wayne and I.”

我不知道是否有人胆敢找亚历克斯•弗格森爵士(Sir Alex Ferguson)的碴。最近，他在否认出售韦恩•鲁尼(Wayne Rooney)的计划时说：“There’s no issue between Wayne and I.”（韦恩和我之间没有问题。）

Sir Alex, manager of Manchester United football club and subject of a Harvard Business School case study, had already banned two newspapers from his press conference for reporting that Rooney would be leaving. He is also famous for subjecting players to “hair dryer” tirades.

作为曼联(Manchester United)足球俱乐部的主教练和哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)一项案例分析的研究对象，弗格森禁止两家报道鲁尼将离队的报纸出席自己的资讯发布会。他还以对球员的“吹风机”式痛骂而闻名。

His “between Wayne and I” mistake is a common one. As an Oxford Dictionaries online writing tip explains: “A preposition such as ‘between’ should be followed by an objective pronoun (such as ‘me’, ‘him’, ‘her’, and ‘us’) rather than a subjective pronoun (such as ‘I’, ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘we’). Saying ‘between you and I’ is grammatically equivalent to saying ‘between him and she’, or ‘between we’, which are both clearly wrong. People make this mistake because they know it’s not correct to say, for example, ‘John and me went to the shops’. They know that the correct sentence would be ‘John and I went to the shops’. But they then mistakenly assume that the words ‘and me’ should be replaced by ‘and I’ in all cases.”

而他的“between Wayne and I”是人们常犯的错误。牛津词典在线(Oxford Dictionaries online)的写作技巧提示解释道：“between等介词后应搭配宾语代词（如me、him、her、us）而不是主语代词（如I、he、she、we）。说‘between you and I’，在语法上等同于说‘between him and she’或‘between we’，后两种说法都是明显的错误。人们之所以犯这种错误，是因为他们知道说‘John and me went to the shops’是不对的。他们明白，正确的句子是‘John and I went to the shops’。但他们错误地以为在所有情况下‘and me’均应被替换为‘and I’。”

Successful football managers can get away with it. What about ordinary wage slaves? Employers and professors say grammatical lapses and poor writing are everywhere, and have been for a long time.

成功的足球教练犯这种错误不会被追究。但对于普通的“薪奴”呢？雇主和教授们称，语法错误和糟糕文笔随处可见，而且长期如此。

Aïda Alaka, a US law professor, wrote in a 2010 article in the Journal of Legal Education: “Many of my brightest students have, by their own admission, no grasp of the rules governing writing.”

美国法学教授阿依达•阿拉卡(Aïda Alaka)在2010年《法律教育学报》(Journal of Legal Education)的一篇文章中写道：“我有许多优秀学生自己承认，他们没有掌握写作规范。”

Human resources directors at leading US companies told a 2004 survey that up to a third of their employees could not write properly.

在2004年的一项调查中，美国大公司的人力资源主管表示，写不出像样语句的员工比例多达三分之一。

But can HR directors write? A reader sent me an internal memo from her head of HR, complete with misplaced apostrophes and singular subjects matched with plural verbs. This is the man in charge of our recruitment, she said despairingly.

但人力资源主管就擅长写作吗？一位读者发给我一份来自她的人力资源主管的内部备忘录，里面充斥着撇号使用不当和单数主语搭配复数动词的现象。她绝望地说，此人负责公司的招聘。

What should you do if one of your staff or, worse, one of your bosses, emails a customer saying “thank you for meeting Rob and I last week”?

如果一位同事或（更糟的是）上司在给客户的电子邮件中写道“thank you for meeting Rob and I last week”，你应该怎么做？

The first option is to lighten up. Even people who know the rules don’t always follow them. If you have forgotten your keys, do you really ring the doorbell and shout to your spouse “it’s I”?

第一种选择是放轻松。即便是知晓规则的人也不一定总能遵守规则。如果你忘带了钥匙，你在按响门铃时，会不会对着你的另一半大喊“it's I”？

Yes, people may be sending out semi-literate correspondence, but the teaching of grammar has been poor for so long that most of the customers probably don’t notice.

没错，人们或许会发出“半文盲”的信件，但语法教学长期不尽如人意，因此大多数客户很可能根本注意不到。

This won’t do, of course. There are still plenty who do notice. And if you have read this far you are probably one of those who reacts to an email saying “your wrong about that” the way Sir Alex does to a final whistle when his team is a goal behind.

当然，这不够好。仍有很多人的确能注意到错误。而且，既然你已经读到本文此处，那么你很可能会对一封写有“your wrong about that”的邮件大动肝火，就像弗格森在球队一球落后时面对终场哨响的反应一样。

So what should you do? If the errant employee reports to you, it is fairly easy. You say: “It’s not your fault, because you probably weren’t taught this at school, but I would like to show you how apostrophes work.” Or how to decide whether to use ‘I’ or ‘me’. (The answer is to remove the other person. If you say “they spoke to me”, then you say “they spoke to Gerard and me”, not “Gerard and I”.)

那么你应当怎么办？如果犯错的员工是你的下属，处理起来并不难。你可以说：“这不是你的错，因为你上学时很可能没有学过这个，但我想教教你如何使用撇号。”或是指导应该用“I”还是“me”。（答案是，排除句中另一个人的干扰。如果你说“they spoke to me”，那么就应该说“they spoke to Gerard and me”，而不是“Gerard and I”。）

Many managers find recipients of such advice grateful. They often ask: “Why didn’t anyone tell me this before?”

很多经理发现，获得这些建议的人心存感激。他们常常问道：“为何之前没有人告诉我？”

After that, explaining to staff members how to improve their writing becomes harder. As Prof Alaka says, they “might not know what we are talking about when we suggest that they eliminate the passive voice or the improper use of gerunds”. Concentrating on discrete improvements is more effective. Proper use of apostrophes is not the same as decent writing, but at least it eliminates the worst offences.

之后，向员工解释如何提高写作水平就有些难度了。正如阿拉卡教授所说，“当我们建议他们避免使用被动语态或不恰当的动名词时，他们可能觉得不知所云”。注重零零碎碎的提高更加有效。正确使用撇号与像样的写作不是一回事，但它至少能消除那些最糟糕的错误。

What if the miscreant is someone senior? You could send the offending missive back, adding: “I fear this may have become garbled in transmission.” But this is unlikely to enlighten the culprit or endear you to him or her. You still have to work together. The same goes for: “How on earth did you get any job, let alone the one you’ve got?”

如果犯错者的级别比你更高呢？你可以将出错的邮件发回对方，并补充一行字：“恐怕这封信的表达有些含混。”但这可能既无法开导犯错者，也不会博得他/她对你的好感。你还不如说：“你究竟是怎么得到任何工作的，更别说是这份工作了？”

Probably the safest way is to suggest a writing course for all employees, pointing out some of the mistakes they keep making.

或许最保险的方式是提议为所有员工开设写作课，同时指出他们常犯的一些错误。

None of these options is easy. Few people like a pedant. But I do. If I have made any mistakes, or if you think I can improve my writing style, please don’t hold back.

这几种选择都有难处。没有几个人喜欢学究。但我喜欢。如果我犯下任何错误，或是你认为我能够改善我的写作风格，请大胆地说出来

And between you and me, if you told all your colleagues and underlings the same, they would probably respect you for it.

再告诉你一条秘籍：如果你对同事和下属说这句话，他们很可能会因此敬佩你。