"Politics and the English Language" Review

I found George Orwell's article "Politics and the English Language" to be interesting, accurate, and often humorous.  The overall idea of the article was appealing to me because I am always looking for new ways to improve my writing.  I thought all of his rule, while somewhat strict, were great ideas on improving writing.  I especially enjoyed the rule where he stated, "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent" (Orwell 9).  The other riles I had heard already, but I had never thought about this particular rule before.  I found it to be quite akin to my taste in writing.  I've never been a fan of "fancy foreign words" when a simple English word was sufficient. 

Another part of the article I found interesting was when Orwell said, "modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images [...] It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been said by someone else [...]" (Orwell 5).  When I read this, I sat back and thought about some of the implications this kind of writing has on me as a reader.  I cam to this conclusion: when a writer writes as Orwell says most do nowadays, I am less inclined to read and comprehend the meaning.  When it's a slough of over-used phrases and a mess of pretentious words, I tend to skim over the text.  

I guess the importance of good writing boils down (I thought I might be ironic and use a horrible, over-used phrase) to more than just great diction or syntax.  Truly great writing has to be though provoking while not being too wordy.  It has to be written well while not being over-done.  Most importantly, great writing has to be the author's original thoughts and phrases, or it will just be lost in an accumulation of works too similar to it.