Politics And The English Language by George Orwell
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- writing
- , orwell
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Saved by 7 people (0 private), first by anonymouse user on 2008-08-10
Public Sticky notes
he first is staleness of imagery: the other is lack of precision.
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prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.
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Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
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The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.
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It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.
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attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy.
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By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.
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A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
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Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions, and not a 'party line'.
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