"Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell

It seems that Orwell was in  a prickly mood when he wrote this piece; the whole paper is basically a ranting hate list of things writers do wrong. Here are some things that, as a writer, I found to be positive and negative.


Positive

1. All examples are given at once: This allowed him to make his point about each of them without halting every time to give the example.
2.  Each concern was sectioned off: When targeting a specific problem, like "dying metaphors", he gave the segment a heading.

Negative

1. I think the piece could have been shorter and still gotten the point across. It's ironic that he mentions cutting out unnecessary words when his lists are unnecessarily long.
2. Blaming politics for all of the problems in "modern writing" isn't completely believable to me. Yes, I agree that political jargon is purposefully vague and dry, but I can't see that it has influenced other types of writing. I think making the mistakes he mentioned has more to do with laziness than trying to sound like a political leader.

Kayla Santos