Orwell: Politics and the English Language

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.

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.

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...

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.

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

"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?

Pity about the formatting.