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His essays Shooting An Elephant and Politics and the English Language have always stuck with me. We have the 4 volume collection in the family. It's at an arm's distance right now.

I read Animal Farm when I was 12 and 1984 a few years later. And I've re-read them a few times since. In college, I read Down and Out. Traveling through Europe I read Homage to Catalonia.

Orwell is my favorite writer and 1984 is my favorite book.

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"Politics and the English Language" is unquestionably one of Orwell's most important essays. Kind of amazing that this post overlooks it.

The post quotes it, but does not mention it.

I loved it so much that I once tried to do a 'modern update' of it, with headers and bullet points and so on. It's meant to be a supplement to the original essay, not a replacement: http://visakanv.com/blog/politics-and-the-english-language

I would be willing to bet money that Orwell would have hated bullet points. Also, PowerPoint.

I didn't remove anything that he said; I just presented his multiple lists of examples in a easier-to-read format. The original essay probably was formatted a particular way on the printed page, but it's turned into a tedious wall of text in the orwell.ru version.

I have a link to the predecessor in opening; so you can open both copies in separate tabs and compare them for yourself.

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