Yes, good writing meets its purpose. But what of the purpose. I'm reminded of business research I have paid for, which is full of Anglo Saxon expletives, placed strategically to appear to add value to a very expensive document. The purpose imho was to make the value of the document look expensive. The outcome? I had to translate the same documents into language according to the audience. For internal management use, I would remove some of the embellishments, but add jargon. For the media, it was simple plain English.
I liked Stephen King on writing. Write great opening lines, remember why you write, avoid adverbs. When you read his good books (subjective) you can enjoy reading them slowly, so that you can admire and enjoy the craft.
Perhaps the simplicity of Orwell's choice of words makes his writing accessible to all ages, yet if you appreciate the depth and layers of his writing, you will find a variety of messages, not all accessible to all readers. And yet, it is still for a purpose. To entertain, to teach, to warn. All are valid.
I have clients who demand I use Grammarly when writing for them, yet back when I had a list of 30,000 people who subscribed to a technology blog I used to run, the most common factor people quoted about my writing, was they felt I was talking directly to them, one-to-one.
At what point do the rules matter? I picked up a book of the total works of Shakespeare not long ago. The words were as he wrote them. Those words were all but unreadable to me.
Cool idea for a debate. You fight your corner on “egregious” rules well.
Thanks—I enjoyed that discussion
Hi Henry! Can you share the ricks essay you refer to?
Ok so this is the original but in very different form: https://thelondonmagazine.org/article/cliche-responsible-speech-geoffrey-hill/
It then was in a book called The State of the Language (1980)
Finally it is in “The Force of Poetry” (1987) which as I say is hugely recommended
I cannot see a version of the whole thing online unless you can get it through Internet Archive...
Thanks a lot for taking the trouble
No worries
I only know it in the book “The Force of Poetry” but I’ll check where it was printed first. The whole book is excellent.
Thanks! Will get the book :)
Yes, good writing meets its purpose. But what of the purpose. I'm reminded of business research I have paid for, which is full of Anglo Saxon expletives, placed strategically to appear to add value to a very expensive document. The purpose imho was to make the value of the document look expensive. The outcome? I had to translate the same documents into language according to the audience. For internal management use, I would remove some of the embellishments, but add jargon. For the media, it was simple plain English.
I liked Stephen King on writing. Write great opening lines, remember why you write, avoid adverbs. When you read his good books (subjective) you can enjoy reading them slowly, so that you can admire and enjoy the craft.
Perhaps the simplicity of Orwell's choice of words makes his writing accessible to all ages, yet if you appreciate the depth and layers of his writing, you will find a variety of messages, not all accessible to all readers. And yet, it is still for a purpose. To entertain, to teach, to warn. All are valid.
I have clients who demand I use Grammarly when writing for them, yet back when I had a list of 30,000 people who subscribed to a technology blog I used to run, the most common factor people quoted about my writing, was they felt I was talking directly to them, one-to-one.
At what point do the rules matter? I picked up a book of the total works of Shakespeare not long ago. The words were as he wrote them. Those words were all but unreadable to me.
What matters is that we write.
Veni, vidi, scripti
All imho of course