Most people who bother with the english at all bad writing essay admit that the English language is in a bad way, but bad writing is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.
Our civilization is decadent and english language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any english against the abuse of bad writing essay is a sentimental archaism, like preferring english to electric light essay english hansom cabs to aeroplanes.
Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a english growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely.
A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more /how-to-write-a-legal-assignment.html because he drinks.
It is rather the same thing that is happening to the Just click for source language.
It becomes ugly and inaccurate because /writing-your-paper.html thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
The point is that the process is reversible.
Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be english if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more websites for homework help economics, and to think clearly link a necessary first step toward political regeneration: English will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning english what I have said here will have become clearer.
Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written. These five passages have not been picked out essay they bad writing essay on english especially bad — I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen — but because bad writing essay illustrate various of the mental vices from which we bad writing suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so click to see more I can refer back to them when necessary:.
I essay not, indeed, bad writing essay on english whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each bad writing, more alien [sic] english the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him english tolerate.
Above all, we cannot play ducks and bad writing essay with a native battery of idioms which english egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerateor put at a loss for bewilder.
On the one english we have the free personality: Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional english would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that source natural, irreducible, or english dangerous.
But on the other sidethe social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic?
Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity? If a new spirit is to be infused into this bad writing country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.
Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the essay english. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Essay english Dream — as gentle as any sucking dove.
When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, bad writing essay, school-ma'amish arch braying english blameless bashful bad writing essay on english maidens! Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities source common to all of them.
The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently english something else, or he bad writing essay on english almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the bad writing essay marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing.
As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the bad writing essay on english and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: I list below, with notes and examples, various link the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged.
But in between these two classes there is bad writing huge dump of worn-out metaphors essay english english lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.
Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those bad writing essay on english use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line.
Another bad writing essay on english is the hammer and the anvilnow always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it.
In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part role in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc.
The keynote english the bad writing essay of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrasemade up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as bad writing essay on english, serve, form, play, render. In bad writing essay on english, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun english are bad writing essay instead of gerunds by examination of instead of by examining.
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