Saturday, November 10, 2007

on request

since you asked, ming loong, here's one of the masters on how to write well:
  • Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
  • Never use a long word where a short one will do.
  • If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
  • Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.
  • Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
  • Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
- George Orwell.

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4 Comments:

Blogger a adhiyatma said...

One from me: the absolute worst crime i can think of in the history of writing is to try too hard. If you aren't a flashy writer, you don't need to be.

cf. Wilfred Owen. The absolute worst poet in the history of language itself. He makes the Vogons sound like T.S. Eliot. The last hour of my Modern Lit paper is spent negotiating peace treaties with my lower intestines.

adam

11/10/2007 10:52 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmm... I have read Politics and the English Language but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

As for Wilfred Owen and Eliot, I know almost nothing about them (except that Wilfred Owen is a war poet?) I have never studied literature...

11/11/2007 5:24 pm  
Blogger Unknown said...

adam would tell you that reading owen's enough to give you hemorrhoids. or something along those lines. T.S. Eliot, on the other hand, is (nearly) sublimated genius.

11/11/2007 8:23 pm  
Blogger a adhiyatma said...

try lynne truss's 'Eats, shoots, and leaves'

Best book on punctuation ever.

11/11/2007 9:48 pm  

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