I note his stating "Apologies in advance..." This is itself a hackneyed expression, yet he uses it most properly. "Apologia," after all, is a defense of one's position - which he proceeds to do.

quote:

I note his stating "Apologies in advance..."

That is part of Geoff Pullum's writing, not Orwell's. Why should he be expected to avoid that phrase when he spends the article deconstructing Orwell's advice?

Yes, arnie, I understood that. I should have explicitly stated it.

Take all the redundancy, ambiguity, and metaphor/simile out of language and there will not be much left. P&EL always reminds me of Alfred Korzybski of general semantics fame (or should I say infame as a backformation of infamy?). Most peevers are alleged lovers of language, but when their strange notions are investigated and researched, they seem to know as much about language as astrologers know about stars and humans.

[Edited out redundant out.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

Of course you could do it but not everything that can be done, should be done.

Removing all of the things Orwell (and others, he's not a sole offender, after all) says we should remove, would reduce language to the level of "The cat sat on the mat."

We used to do a precis exercise at school where our English teacher gave us a lengthy passage with the instructions to rewrite it in no more than 100 words. (Sometimes when he was feeling especially mean it would be 50 words.)

I was very good at it but I'm under no illusions that my end result was ever better than the original.

Let's take the opening of a book chosen at random from my e-book collection. We'll take a classic just because they are more frequently held up as models of good writing.

So Charles Dickens raise your hand. Please recite for us the opening passages of David Copperfield.

quote:

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.

OK - that's enough of that. Let's take a look. Let's eliminate everything we don't want or need.

That ridiculous first sentence has to go. It says nothing. Well, almost nothing. It boils down to "This book is about my life." There we've saved a whopping 21 words already AND made it much clearer.

What comes next?

"To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night."

Well that's not as bad. It does contain some factual information. So let's get rid of just the extraneous stuff.

"I will start at birth. I was born at midnight on a Friday."

The next sentence adds nothing. Strike it completely.

As for the rest, oh dear, oh dear.
There is so much unnecessary verbiage it beggars belief. Try this.

Because of this the nurse and the local women said I would have an unlucky life and would be able to see dead people.


There we go, done. It now reads.

"This book is about my life.
I will start at birth. I was born at midnight on a Friday.
Because of this the nurse and the local women said I would have an unlucky life and would be able to see dead people."

Wow. 162 words down to a mere 43. A saving of about 72%. And now it all makes sense without having to exercise my brain to read it.

Does anybody, anywhere, really believe my version is better?

Of course I could make it

"Because I was born at midnight on a Friday people said I would have an unlucky life and see dead people."

which, at 21 words is an impressive 87% saving with virtually no loss of meaning.

An example of a six-word story written by a follower of Orwell's recommended style:

My wife’s suicide note: ungrammatical, naturally.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: arnie,

I loved Spurgin's creeping into the "no-no" land of high Google Scholar hits.