Orwell: Politics and the English Language

http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html

by 10ren • 17 years ago

35 14 17 years ago

resort.com

Radix2• 17 years ago

I submitted this once. It's really good and much better than most of the things on the front page most of the time.

If you haven't read it before you should read it now.

imp• 17 years ago

Here are his six rules from the end of the article:

   1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
   2. Never us a long word where a short one will do.
   3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
   4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
   5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
   6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

raffi• 17 years ago

The Plain English community is big on these rules and they're at the heart of the style checker I built for After the Deadline.

I flag passive voice (4), complex words (2), cliches (1), redundant expressions (3), some jargon phrases (5), and I use a statistical model to eliminate suggestions that make no sense (6).

tc• 17 years ago

My favorite part of this essay is where he translates a verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Into modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

... which is identical to the style of nearly all modern research papers.

bitwize• 17 years ago

That doesn't necessarily mean they are good research papers :) See the advice of Shivers:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/diss-advice.html

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

your writing signals values. being unaware of this doesn't mean you aren't signaling anything, just that your signals might be a jumbled mishmash. people are unconsciously aware of this and respond better to more consistent works.

This is what your english teacher was talking about when they said to eliminate everything that doesn't directly support your main idea. When trying to convince someone of something it often seems like a good idea to just toss any justifications we can think of out there and try to overwhelm them with sheer numbers.

Semiapies2• 17 years ago

Pity about the formatting.

fluffster• 17 years ago

This is nicer: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79e/part42.ht...

And for Orwell's other essays: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79e/

Semiapies2• 17 years ago

Yes, much nicer.

cwb2• 17 years ago

And for printing, you might find http://www.utdallas.edu/~aria/research/resources/orwell.pdf preferable.

cwb2• 17 years ago

Strunk & White's The Elements of Style deserves a mention here in case anyone has missed it -- clear, concise, and practical writing advice.

1999 edition on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/d...

1918 edition online: http://www.bartleby.com/141/

For more hand-holding, On Writing Well by William Zinsser is worthwhile.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonficti...

ATB• 17 years ago

The popular linguistics blog "Language Log" had some interesting commentary on "Politics and the English Language" written in a calmly analytical style (interspersed with some judicious jibes) that I think many YC.HN readers will find rather agreeable:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992

The entire 'Prescriptivist Poppycock' category at Language Log is generally good reading:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=5

mike_organon• 17 years ago

"When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it."

I can't see how this can be done for subjects other than physical objects. I think in words, not pure concepts. How can you visualize subjects like politics or metaphors and language?

Radix2• 17 years ago

Well, when I metacognate, I kinda feel the connotations of words. In some sentences different connotations will be stronger than others or dropped. So, these abstract concepts fall into this abstract network of concepts.

For the word politics one might be teaching children at a summer camp. While teaching them one may notice the kids have fallen into a popularity hierarchy. When recounting the kids social structure one could describe struggles over their social order as fights amongst clicks or the kids politics. Whichever description comes up first, and depending on what lesser connotations or more desirable.

That's the way I believe it works, but I'm not sure I've conveyed it very well. It's an abstract idea that I don't know how to convey (there is a better word) well.

Orwell: Politics and the English Language

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