Schopenhauer said it 200 years before Orwell did, a fact I discovered only this week.
I recommend Schopenhauer's essay if you liked this one. Read essays 1-3 http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
61–67 of 67 posts
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#62One of my favorite essays and even more relevant today than when Orwell wrote it. ("Enemy combatants", "right-sizing", "Patriot Act") I think the effect in business is even greater, partly because the bar for good business speech and writing is so low.
I wrote a post inspired by Orwell's essay called How Your High School English Teacher is Ruining Your Proposals to vent my frustration over language that obfuscates rather than clarifies, whether intentionally or just due to laziness. (http://www.mimiran.com/proposals/how-your-high-school-englis...)
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#63The more I read Orwell's essays of the 1940s the more they seem like a master class in how to write, which means they are also a master class in how to think. The clarity and impact in his style are so powerful that it's actually shocking. Moreover, it seems to be aging well, so Orwell's reputation (specifically for this) has been increasing. Other great examples: http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw htt…
If you're like me and prefer reading print books, there's an excellent (and very comprehensive) collection of Orwell's letters, essays and journalism. It's slightly difficult to track down but worth the effort. http://www.godine.com/search.asp?search=orwell
There's also the 20-volume, 8500-page Complete Works, which I first saw on the bookshelf of Christopher Hitchens in some interview video. Much more difficult to find [0].
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#64If you're as turned off by the formatting of this page as I am, I'm currently working on a CSS framework to beautifully display longform text. As luck would have it, this essay was my test case: http://alexgolec.github.io/orwell/politics
Readability handles it well: http://www.readability.com/articles/mmpx1oek
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#65The more I read Orwell's essays of the 1940s the more they seem like a master class in how to write, which means they are also a master class in how to think. The clarity and impact in his style are so powerful that it's actually shocking. Moreover, it seems to be aging well, so Orwell's reputation (specifically for this) has been increasing. Other great examples: http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw htt…
> I would very much like to know what it was that gave Orwell that degree of insight. Orwell said it himself, in Why I Write: he believed he has a "power of facing unpleasant facts". By all accounts that sometimes made him difficult company. This focus on negativity probably contributed to his bouts of melancholy. But this power, I believe, came from always putting people first. Unlike most intellectuals he never fel…
Yes, and there is a special class of "unpleasant facts" that Orwell was particularly adept at facing: facts which contradict one's preferred ideology. In this he was remarkably strong and remarkably rare; a refusal to face such facts practically defines political discourse.
Compare that to someone like Hitchens (who comes to mind because he wrote a book-length homage to Orwell and clearly identified with him), who was more typical (and more shallow) in refusing to concede so much as an atom to his enemies.
Even more remarkable is that Orwell could critique ideology without slipping into "on the one hand, on the other hand" wishy-washiness. If you look at contemporary discourse, that's what nearly everyone who isn't a strong partisan does, and it's a false note of its own.
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#66Politics and the English Language [with annotations from a rational thinker]
http://pastebin.com/mSzbX5Hd
Re: George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)
#67If you're as turned off by the formatting of this page as I am, I'm currently working on a CSS framework to beautifully display longform text. As luck would have it, this essay was my test case: http://alexgolec.github.io/orwell/politics
..and you somehow forget the most important feature, bar none: p { max-width: 30em; }
What browser are you using? I believe I implemented the max-width using a container div rather than putting restrictions on the p elements.