Reflections of a working writer and reader
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The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find - this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify - that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship. George Orwell
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Recent Comments
- bhupinder: Wonderfully well written, John ! Always a delight to visit y
- Warwick Paul Onyeama: This is a wonderful photograph that catches a moment in time
- somebadplankton: Sent me to the dictionary for quiffed.
- john baker: Gracias, Bhupinder.
- Bhupinder Singh: Superb, John. The last two lines are superlative.
- Catherine Isolde Eisner: In addition, doesn’t Graham's surname, Hendrick, recall th
- john baker: Thanks, Jim. Your comments and insights are always welcome.
- Jim Murdoch: A lot likeable about this. I hear comedians are often approa
- Mark Patrick Lynch: Thanks, John. It's good to see that Paul Sutherland's man
- john baker: Thanks, Mark. Good to hear from you, and to read your story
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