
Orwell: Politics and the English Language - 10ren
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html
======
tc
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
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>

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imp
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
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).

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cwb
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...](http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-
Strunk/dp/020530902X)

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...](http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-
Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/)

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Radix
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.

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ATB
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>

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mike_organon
"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?

~~~
Radix
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.

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Semiapies
Pity about the formatting.

~~~
fluffster
This is nicer:
[http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79e/part42.ht...](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79e/part42.html)

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

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

