"Politics and the English Language"

Man, was Orwell a stingy old man or what? I mean, I was shaking my head laughing at how irritated he was about how muddied and cluttered the English language has become. 13 pages of "writers are using 20 words where 8 will do." I almost stopped reading after page 7 to say "Um, duh?". And perhaps that was what I found so entertaining about reading this piece: the fact that it takes him 13 pages to make a point I came away with in 10 words. Not pages, not paragraphs, not even sentences. Words.

Dying Metaphors: Fancy way of saying "cliches."
Operators or Verbal False Limbs: Why can't you just say flat out what you're doing?
Pretentious Diction: Let's dress up our words and make them look pretty!
Meaningless Words: Plain and simple: We've used these words so much that we might as well be talking to a wall.

While the reading has been insightful, I feel like Orwell should have taken his own advice and been a bit less winded with his argument and just squashed it down to his six rules at the end on page 12:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, of other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use 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 a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
5. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

At least that, I wouldn't have minded reading.

Josh Boyak