I wake up with a civil war song, from one of the Irish brigades, going round in my head:
He'll lead us unto glory, oh
he'll lead us unto glory
In preparing to do my first grading of the semester, or rather, in trying to avoid doing my first grading of the semester, I reread Orwell's "Politics and the English Language". Great stuff. Of course whenever global affairs turn tumultuous, pundits on all sides break out their pithy Orwell quotes, and the debacle in Iraq has been no exception. There was an interesting piece somewhere, maybe it was Christopher Hitchens, about the dangers of using Orwell for partisan purposes. Actually, now that I think about it, there were several articles recently about the enigmatic Orwell and his political leanings. I think our inability to easily fit him with one of our increasingly narrow political labels is a fine testament to the worth of his work. But politics were not the impetus for my rereading. Old George offers fine advice for anyone who writes or otherwise uses the English language. Here are his specific guidelines for writers (just thinking about them has made me rewrite this paragraph a couple times only to just accept that it will have to be mediocre):
...one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
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.
