I was surprised to learn that George Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language, was written more than half a century ago. Because of new discoveries or changes in attitudes and beliefs, most essays that have been around for a long period of time are no longer applicable today. However, Politics is still relevant because the bad writing styles present in compositions written decades ago are still present in than those that are written today.
Just a few days back I was reading an essay written in 1999 that is guilty of pretentious diction, one of the “tricks” Orwell claims to result in poorly written prose. One thing that makes an essay unappealing to me is when the author uses unnecessarily difficult words when a simpler one could have been used in its place. In the essay I read, the author used words like pedagogical instead of teaching, and intransigent instead of uncompromising. Furthermore, the author was quite fond of writing vague, run-on sentences such as:
Unable to utilize the culture imbibed in the home and in the community, the child is rendered empty when he faces up to the values contained in the reading material and the negative result may be seen in the lack of any active involvement in the implications of the material manifesting itself in disinterest or the absence of discernment.
Even President Bush’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly on September 2002 is not spared from these bad writing styles. He used the word “democratic” thrice to describe the newly liberated Middle Eastern countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, as though he were emphasizing that democracy is the best form of government.
