Blog Jones

What if Powerpoint had been around in the days of the Civil War?

Catallarchy, one of my favorite sources of libertarian and economic commentary, has linked to an essay by George Orwell, entitled “Politics and the English Language.” As you might expect from Orwell, he calls out against the misuse and confusion of the English language.

I highly recommend reading it, especially if you plan to write anything political at all, even so much as a letter to the editor. Two of the gems in the treasure chest:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

(In addition to this article, I also highly recommend Orwell’s masterwork, 1984. I read it for myself only recently, and I found it to be both clever and insightful. I especially loved the phrase “the place where there is no darkness.” There’s a copy available for free online.)

Go read the whole thing.