George Orwell on language

I've been saving this link for a day when I didn't feel like writing a whole lot. I've realized that maybe I'm being a little bit too wordy – my last entry took me several hours to write up and prepare, and I wound up posting it before I thought that I was 'finished'.

Anyway, since I've been talking a lot about language lately, I thought I would share a link to an essay by George Orwell, written before he wrote 1984, about how language, when misused, can cloud our thinking, and how cloudy, lazy thinking can muddy our language. I learned about it while listening to a speech writer talk on NPR; he mentioned the article and called it his 'bible'. Having read it, I re-read it and pay close enough attention to its lessons that you might call it my 'bible', as well.

Here's the link, and I urge all of you, writers and non writers, to read it:

Politics and the English Language

In other news: Happy Valentine's Day!