Reading Response Politics and the English Language.

In this essay, Orwell tries to educate the reader on the differences between good English and bad English. At the very start of his writing, Orwell makes his point about writing: "It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." To help make his point, Orwell gives a few examples of what he thinks is poor writing. Then, he breaks the essay up into different parts and explains a little for each part. For example, he talks about "verbal false limbs" and gives some examples of it. He warns that passive voice ruins all writing and active voice works better whenever possible. He even takes a rather well-written paragraph and translates it into all the examples that he had just warned of. By doing this, he shows how much better the first paragraph really was, which further makes his point. What I got out of it was that Orwell was trying to say that horrible "modern writing" is filled with fluff. He goes on to explain political speech and the vague words used in it. Orwell makes his point very well and explains a lot of his beliefs strongly. I think this will be helpful to us because in our argument papers, we should try to use straight-forward language rather than fluff. Also, this essay is a good example of an actual argument paper. Orwell argues his point of view about writing and the way he thinks that writing should be. He gives examples to support his stance and uses firm language to back up his beliefs.