Your position seems to be, then, that Orwell’s advice is sound, and it was his failure to follow his own advice which was unsound. I had taken you to mean approximately the opposite—that Orwell, a good writer, failed to take his own advice, and thereby illustrated the unsoundness of his advice. Or did you have something else entirely in mind?
Actually, both, to some extent. There is good and bad writing in terms of aesthetic style, and also in terms of logical soundness and factual accuracy. Any given piece of writing can be good or bad along these dimensions almost independently. Clearly, texts that combine great style with bad logic and inaccurate facts are especially misleading and difficult to assess correctly, and a lot of Orwell’s writing is in this category.
Now, in this essay, the great stylist Orwell breaks his own advice all over the place and thereby demonstrates that it’s complete rubbish when it comes to achieving good writing style. Good style in fact requires breaking these rules so often that it’s meaningless to espouse them as general guidelines. What’s significant is that Orwell is such a good stylist that his style dazzles you into not realizing this even as the contradictions are dancing in front of your nose. At the same time, the rules do have some limited applicability when it comes to logic and facts: some particular sorts of passives, bad metaphors, etc. are commonly used as weasely rhetorical tricks—and Orwell’s weasely essay does in fact employ them, hidden in plain sight by his great style.
So, to sum it up, Orwell has taken some observations about writing of non-zero but limited usefulness and applicability and written an unsound essay espousing them as supposedly general (if not absolute) rules. In the process he has contradicted himself by demonstrating that to achieve good style one must break these rules liberally, and also by breaking them in those situations where they do have some applicability (such as the awful “it is generally assumed that...”).
Debates on proper language style and grammar are always entertaining due to the impossibility fundamentally inherent in them of ever coming to a rational resolution. It’s a fun distraction to hone the creative mind for when real debate comes along.
It’s a fun distraction to hone the creative mind for when real debate comes along.
Or a temptation to reinforce bad habits of rhetoric so that when there is actually a rational conclusion to be reached everyone can merrily ignore it and follow their ego unfettered.
Your position seems to be, then, that Orwell’s advice is sound, and it was his failure to follow his own advice which was unsound. I had taken you to mean approximately the opposite—that Orwell, a good writer, failed to take his own advice, and thereby illustrated the unsoundness of his advice. Or did you have something else entirely in mind?
Actually, both, to some extent. There is good and bad writing in terms of aesthetic style, and also in terms of logical soundness and factual accuracy. Any given piece of writing can be good or bad along these dimensions almost independently. Clearly, texts that combine great style with bad logic and inaccurate facts are especially misleading and difficult to assess correctly, and a lot of Orwell’s writing is in this category.
Now, in this essay, the great stylist Orwell breaks his own advice all over the place and thereby demonstrates that it’s complete rubbish when it comes to achieving good writing style. Good style in fact requires breaking these rules so often that it’s meaningless to espouse them as general guidelines. What’s significant is that Orwell is such a good stylist that his style dazzles you into not realizing this even as the contradictions are dancing in front of your nose. At the same time, the rules do have some limited applicability when it comes to logic and facts: some particular sorts of passives, bad metaphors, etc. are commonly used as weasely rhetorical tricks—and Orwell’s weasely essay does in fact employ them, hidden in plain sight by his great style.
So, to sum it up, Orwell has taken some observations about writing of non-zero but limited usefulness and applicability and written an unsound essay espousing them as supposedly general (if not absolute) rules. In the process he has contradicted himself by demonstrating that to achieve good style one must break these rules liberally, and also by breaking them in those situations where they do have some applicability (such as the awful “it is generally assumed that...”).
Debates on proper language style and grammar are always entertaining due to the impossibility fundamentally inherent in them of ever coming to a rational resolution. It’s a fun distraction to hone the creative mind for when real debate comes along.
Or a temptation to reinforce bad habits of rhetoric so that when there is actually a rational conclusion to be reached everyone can merrily ignore it and follow their ego unfettered.