1925_Quixote - The Monday Morning Memo

Arthur Ernst Becher,
(1877-1960)
Watercolor and gouache.
Don Quixote
Circa 1925.

“May God forgive you for the damage you’ve done to the whole rest of the world, in trying to cure the wittiest lunatic ever seen! Don’t you see, my dear sir, that, whatever utility there might be in curing him, it could never match the pleasure he gives with his madness?”
– Don Antonio Moreno, speaking to Sansón Carrasco who has ‘cured’ Quixote of believing in the impossible dream. Don Quixote, Part Two, chapter 65

“Here are some writing rules proposed by George Orwell to ensure that your language is not vague, misleading, and meaningless:

i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

- from "Politics & the English Language," in which Orwell criticizes the vague, misleading, meaningless writing style of the academics, authors, and politicians of his day, is an excellent work, and as true now as it was in 1946.

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