The story was one of the saddest I have read in ages. The World Bank’s chief economist¹ ordered his staff to write more clearly, shut them up whenever they banged on interminably in presentations, and insisted all reports were short and lucid². Instead of being lauded³ for his bravery Paul Romer was punished like a heretic, and his management duties were taken from him. His story reads like a corporate⁴ take on the martyrdom of Joan of Arc.

这是我许久以来读过的最悲伤的故事了。世界银行(World Bank)首席经济学家保罗?罗默(Paul Romer)命令手下以后写报告要更加清楚明了，作报告时一旦开始啰嗦就立刻让他们闭嘴，还坚持所有报告都必须简明易懂。但罗默先生非但没有因为自己的勇敢赢得称赞，反而像异端分子一样受到了惩罚：被剥夺了管理职责。他的故事听起来简直就像公司版的“圣女贞德(Joan of Arc)的殉难”。

There is only one quarrel I have with Mr Romer. Among his edicts was to impose a quota⁵ on the word “and”, ruling that an official report should contain no more than 2.6 per cent of them. It is a bit odd to persecute⁶ the common conjunction, which has the advantages of being useful, clear and short, when there are all those words out there — leverage⁷, deliver, journey, dialogue, platform, learnings or robust⁸ and a thousand others — that are none of these things.

我只在一个问题上不满罗默先生。他的那些命令中，有一条是对“and”这个单词的使用实行配额限制：官方报告里，“and”出现的次数不得超过总字数的2.6%。如此压迫一个常用连词，委实有些奇怪。“and”可是兼有“有用”、“明确”、“简短”这几项优势，况且还有无数个单词——leverage、deliver、journey、dialogue、platform、learnings、robust，等等等等——与这几项优势毫不沾边。

Yet when the Stanford Literary Lab published a paper in 2015 analysing World Bank reports, “and” came in for a hiding. The authors noted⁹ its use had almost doubled in the previous 70 years and mockingly quoted passages in which ugly, unrelated nouns were slung¹⁰ together with chains of conjunctions.

不过，斯坦福大学文学研究室(Stanford Literary Lab)在2015年发表的一篇论文对世界银行的报告进行了分析，发现“and”的确没起到好作用。作者们注意到，过去70年，“and”的使用几乎翻了一番。他们还嘲弄般地引用了一些段落，里面大量别扭、无关的名词用一串串的连词绑到了一起。

But is this little word really to blame? Over the past week I have immersed myself in assorted¹¹ texts, starting with the work of Martin Wolf, who writes at least as clearly as any economist I have come across. Sure enough, in his last column my computer counted an admirably modest 2.5 per cent of ands. Next I studied a column by Janan Ganesh, a man whose prose is widely admired. He did even better, with only 2 per cent.

但真的是这个小小的单词的责任吗？过去一周，我埋头研究了形形色色的文本。首先从马丁?沃尔夫(Martin Wolf)的文章下手——其行文清楚程度不亚于我读过的任何一位经济学家。果然，据我的电脑统计，他的最新一篇专栏里，“and”的使用频率仅为2.5%，令人佩服。下一个，我研究了散文广受推崇的嘉南?加内什(Janan Ganesh)的一篇专栏。他的成绩比沃尔夫还要好，使用频率仅为2%。

After that, I widened my net and downloaded King Lear in its entirety, to find the Bard¹² used a mere¹³ 19 ands per 1,000. When you consider most of these are stage directions — “Enter Kent and Gloucester” — the true score is lower still.

之后，我扩大了研究范围，下载了《李尔王》(King Lear)全集，结果发现莎士比亚每1000个单词里只用了19个“and”。考虑到其中大部分都是舞台指示，例如“肯特和葛罗斯特上(Enter Kent and Gloucester)”，实际使用次数要更少。

I was about to conclude that Mr Romer was on to something, but then turned to my own writing and found that in last week’s column I used a shaming 30 ands per 1,000 words. Mr Romer would have despaired.

我正准备得出罗默有一定道理的结论，但又数了数我自己的文章，发现我在上周的专栏里丢人地用了3%的“and”。罗默先生看了会感到绝望的。