New blog site! Update your bookmarks/RSS feeds.

I have set up a new blog and I'm calling it Happy Chaos Freedom Machine. I've migrated some of the posts from here already and will be making all my new posts over there from now on. The reason for this is that I'm finding a focus emerging in my posting here that I want to hone and develop. For years I've wanted to write a book about what excites me about the way the world is changing, but I've been unable to find the right entry point and focus to get it done. Instead of a book, I'm going to blog it. Makes sense, right?

Anyway, please update any bookmarks. See you over there.

George Orwell's Writing Advice

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
   

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
   

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

1. 
   

* From “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell.