填空题 Choose from the list[A]to[F]after the passage the best sentences to fill in the gaps in the text. There are more sentences than gaps. Brevity Those of us who are small in physical stature are often reassured by kindly friends who say: " The best things come in small packages... A little person is a beautiful thing... It"s the size of the brain that counts..." and so on. For the man who craves those extra inches in order to dominate an audience, for the woman who regularly has to speak in public while resting her chin on the table, these thoughts provide little consolation. But they do contain a germ of truth. 1. Tall people cannot stretch out in the bath or extend their legs in a sleeper or couchette. They can peer over the top of the crowd but seldom slide through it. As with people, so with letters. There are times when a letter must be long to achieve its purpose. But generally, the shorter the words, the sentences and the letter, the more effective the results will be. Even the longest epistle should be broken up into brief sections. There is no excuse for the sentence that stretches into a paragraph, nor the paragraph that becomes a page. 2. The bore, the windbag, the person whom we would all go the longest distance to avoid, is also the writer whose letters we least like to read. "Oh, him again, " you say, recognizing the prolix prose. " I"ll read it later... if I have time. " So the writer joins the rank of the great unread. In the world of journalism there are newspapers that pay by the word or column inch. This puts a premium on padding. 3. " We only want 500 words, " writes the editor. " We pay ￡ x per thousand words. " " I shall be delighted to write your piece! " the journalist replies. " But it will be harder for me to condense the material you want into 500 words than to produce a piece of 1, 000. I suggest that it would be fairer to pay the rate of ￡ x + ￡ y for the 500-word piece. It will take me longer to write and will cost more in care. " With luck, the editor will agree—as a professional, he will know that length and value are seldom the same. Quality counts. Brevity matters. 4. In the world of public speaking there is a trite saying: " Stand up, speak up and then shut up. " But at least the spoken work is transitory. Unless you are on radio or television, or you are a politician who produces some glorious gaffe—or, of course, you slander someone—your words will probably go unrecorded and unremembered. Commercial correspondence, though, have their words preserved in files, to be used in evidence if necessary. So keep those words short, accurate arid to the point. If you find your letter is too long, take out your equivalent of the sub-editor"s blue pencil. Peel away the extra words with which your thoughts are clothed and leave them to stand on their own naked merits. If you are ashamed of them when they stand stripped, then think again. Redraft, rewrite, rethink... 5. A magazine once asked millionaire Paul Getty for a short article explaining his success. The editor enclosed his cheque for ￡ 200. The multi-millionaire wrote: " Some people find oil. Others don"t. " Be brief, then. Or in the famous words of another oil man, " If you don"t strike oil soon, stop boring!"[A]Churchill was once asked how long it took him to prepare a speech. " If it"s a two-hour speech, " he replied, " ten minutes. If it"s a ten-minute speech, two hours.[B]Many professional writers do their best to avoid this sort of yardstick[C]Excess verbiage not only offends, bores and muddles the reader. It also fools the writer[D]Length is fine in its way, but it may be a nuisance[E]When General Eisenhower appointed Arthur Bums as Chairman of his Economic Advisors, Bumssuggested sending the President a memo outlining plans to organize the flow of economic advice.Ike said, "Keep it short. I can"t read. " Bums replied, "That"s fine, Mr. President. I can"twrite!" So they had a one-hour weekly conference instead[F]Brevity is the soul of a good letter. Short, snappy, concise, clear and pungent paragraphs.Thoughts neatly packed into words with punch. Neat, lively expressions, shorn of padding andpomposity. These are the keys to successful correspondence