In this essay, George Orwell brings to light common mistakes that are found in contemporary English style of writing and argue that we, users of the English language, have the power to fix these problems through adjusting our own writing habits. The mistakes that Orwell brings up are not the typical mistakes of grammar, punctuation or spelling. No, he attacks the very way that a whole generation of English writers has grown accustom to writing and expressing their ideas, and I could not agree with him more. Orwell breaks these simple mistakes into four major types: dying metaphors, verbal false limbs, pretentious diction and meaningless words. When used, these mistakes create sentences that do not express ideas clearly and use common terms and phrases “copied and pasted” from one writer to another. This leads to a lack of originality and writing that is more of a conglomerate of catchy phrases and buzzwords rather than cohesive, well thought-out sentences.
I agree with this school of thought. I have seen many students my age who are afraid of writing the wrong thing or having their ideas rejected, so they write in the manner which Orwell is concerned with as to mask their inner writing insecurity. Many also think that using dying metaphors, verbal false limbs, and pretentious diction makes them sound smarter or acceptable at the college level. However, these habits do nothing but make the readers’ job harder and make the writer sound like a politician trying to avoid answering a hard question.
