I usually read Robert Fisk for other reasons, but his recent article on jargon and cliché caught my eye. Something to read, perhaps, alongside George Orwell's writing rules:
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.
I should say that whenever I look at these, I flinch, and tell myself: remember them more often! But then, I remember Orwell also said this:
A writer can do very little with words in their primary meanings. He gets his effect if at all by using words in a tricky roundabout way.
... and I steady myself again. Here is Orwell's Politics and the English Language.
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