英文中常用總分結構

本文首發於立文悉通微信公眾號（Transystom）

在英文中句群常呈總分結構，如下例：

• A 31 year old woman with no medical history of note presented with bilateral lower leg pain on running. The pain was absent when she started running; gradually built after the first kilometer, forcing her to stop; then resolved shortly after stopping. 來源：BMJ

• We did a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the efficacy of steroids for the prevention of mortality in all forms of tuberculosis, and to quantify heterogeneity in this outcome between affected organ systems. We searched the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group trials register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Medline, Embase, and Literatura Latino-Americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde (LILACS) for studies published up to Sept 6, 2012, and checked reference lists of included studies and relevant reviews. We included all trials in people with tuberculosis in any organ system, with tuberculosis defined clinically or microbiologically. There were no restrictions by age, comorbidity, publication language, or type, dose, or duration of steroid treatment. We used the Mantel-Haenszel method to summarise mortality across trials. 來源：Lancet

論文中一段就闡述一個主題，一段話最理想的情況是3-4句話，最好不要超過5句話，段首是lead sentence，其餘是subsequent sentences，針對lead sentences進行詳細說明、舉例子、補充說明，等等。在寫英文論文時注意這一特點，寫出的文章邏輯才會更加清晰，讀起來更加舒服一些。