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I think Orwell did a great job there actually. Despite its bizarre look, the sentence is evocative and eloquent. It does make me get a clear mental image from

by esjeon 11d ago

I think Orwell did a great job there actually. Despite its bizarre look, the sentence is evocative and eloquent. It does make me get a clear mental image from the very first word. It leaves little room for roaming and guessing, as it firmly nails elements one by one, and, by the time I reach the end of the sentence, I get the full meaning almost immediately. This sentence is not randomly written; this is crafted with intention. TBH, it would take me hours, if not days, to write a sentence this much condensed and easy to understand. I seriously like it. Perhaps, this is more about context -- which style to use in which situation. I'm only guessing here, but, since Orwell is offering an interpretation, he probably chose to be more clinical. He probably had a point to make and didn't want to risk vagueness up-front.

tudelo 11d ago
Well, I can tell what sort of angle you most enjoy. Anyways -- I think there is GOOD writing and BAD writing, but only subjectively. So if you enjoy it, power to you. It's certainly not random, but it is the sort of verbosity that turns off 99 percent of the people that would read it given a comparison. I find the former rather eloquent.
crabbone 11d ago
When I read the Orwell's version, I immediately had the same feeling I had when reading mathematical proofs. I hate so much to hunt the preceding text for anaphora resolution... It's just such a bad and pretentious way of writing. It's hostile to the reader with the side of flaunting author's superiority. It's like having to sit through a party with acclaimed academics: every single one is so full of themselves, they will constantly one-up each other by belittling everyone in their workplace s.a. to make you feel how great of an intellect they possess and how much more they would accomplish, had they not been surrounded by all these bumbling idiots.
- yummybrainz 10d ago
  I agree that it's not great style for just conveying information clearly and plainly (e.g I'd hate to read documentation written like this) but I'd argue that here, the medium is part of the message. It's supposed to sound dry and depressing and somewhat sterile. > It's hostile to the reader with the side of flaunting author's superiority. I think if someone deliberately obfuscates meaning to sound fancier when the point is to communicate information directly, sure, I'd agree. But writing is often art, and I think demanding effort from the reader is fair in that case. I wouldn't make a blanket generalization like that.
  - voidhorse 10d ago
    I disagree. There is plenty of writing that operates at the same level of abstraction (philosophy, mathematics) without being needlessly convoluted. Orwell is a master precisely because he understood language deeply enough to be able to produce a monstrosity on both the level of content (undue abstraction) and structure (winding, breathless syntax).
  - crabbone 10d ago
    I agree in that I don't know in what context Orwell wrote the quote above. Maybe it made more sense the way it fitted in that context. Whenever this kind of discussion happens, I recall Andrey Platonov (a Russian writer, who was so weird in his rejection of the "decadent" parts of speech and sentence clauses that he'd never use passive voice or adverbs, would never put two adjectives side by side etc. that even Soviet censorship decided to ban him.) His works were added to the mandatory high-school reading list back around the collapse of the Soviet Union. I studied book publishing in college right around that time and had taken an elective in editing (the process of preparing a manuscript for publication, especially for the more technical fields, like encyclopedias or handbooks). My professor was a huge fan of Platonov, and, probably, forever spoiled for me whatever people enjoy when they read flamboyant or contorted prose like the one quoted above. One thing that would send my professor into a fit of rage about that quote is that the real subject is people: it's talking about how people incorrectly rationalize the connection between effort and outcome. But, it's written in a way that, formally, the subject is... "the consideration", making it necessary for the reader to work back from the formal towards intended before they can figure out what the author was really trying to say.
emmelaich 11d ago
Are you sure you're referencing the correct quote? Are you familiar with original? Did you you use AI to write this comment?
grey-area 11d ago
Read some Orwell: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
- esjeon 10d ago
  Ah, I just read through it. That’s was a fun read. > This is a parody, but not a very gross one. … So, Orwell wrote the second sentence as a parody of the first sentence, using the modern English that he was criticizing in the essay. > … in the middle the concrete illustrations – race, battle, bread – dissolve into the vague phrase ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. … > … The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. … > … The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. He tried to argue that the second one is worse, but, unfortunately, he successfully simulated one possible interpretation of the original. Sure, the parody has narrower meaning, but it is a valid subset of the original meaning, which is still very significant tbh. This justifies the reduction of “race, battle, bread” into “success or failure”, invalidating one of his points. Also, the parody is not necessarily less concrete. It replaced poetic expressions in the original with words that are bloated, for sure, yet more concrete. It does have awkward expressions, but every word plays a role in the sentence. This basically conflicts with one of his criticisms in the essay — meaningless words. Funnily enough, his another example — “some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism” — also fails to capture the nature of the modern English. He points out the “euphemism” towards the violence as an issue of style, but, no, that’s the whole purpose of it, and his example really just excel at it. Style-wise, again, the writing is very solid. All in all, Orwell simply failed to properly simulate what he was trying to criticize. Good examples of “modern English” can be found in the earlier part of the essay, basically written by other people. Those examples do fit into Orwell’s criticisms.
  - mpalmer 10d ago
    He tried to argue that the second one is worse, but, unfortunately, he successfully simulated one possible interpretation of the original All in all, Orwell simply failed to properly simulate what he was trying to criticize If I was going to read "Orwell was wrong about English" anywhere, I guess it was always going to be HN. The sheer pomposity of your remarks here is the biggest clue that you are not writing them yourself.
yummybrainz 10d ago
I agree! Both versions are great: the former is poetic and grand and would fit right in in a fantasy text; the latter is dry and informative and requires much less mental effort to translate and extract meaning from (though still more than "normal" text. I could imagine a third version that's clearer than the second and still nearly as poetic as the first.
knollimar 10d ago
"a clear mental image from the very first word" Nothing meaningful was said for 9 words. Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that the words appearing here could be anything
mpalmer 10d ago
TBH, it would take me hours, if not days, to write a sentence this much condensed and easy to understand. This is ridiculous on its face. Did it take you 45 minutes to write your own comment?
ThrowawayR2 10d ago
To be gentle, that some here are impressed by Orwell's intentionally bad sentence indicates that they need to improve their reading and writing skills. Using complex words where they don't introduce additional precision or meaning to fake intellectualism is something basic that writing classes warn against. Fun fact for the day, someone coined a word for this type of puffed up, fake intellectual writing: lexiphanicism ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lexiphanicism https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lexiphanicism )
- hombre_fatal 10d ago
  Orwell's bad sentence uses harder words than it needs to, but it reworks the bible verse into direct claims. Needing better reading skills to understand the bible verse just shows that it's not a good way to communicate. If an HNer wrote like the bible verse, you'd find them insufferably ostentatious. Just like you wouldn't want Claude to use literary flair when you're asking why your production database stopped working. If you dumb down Orwell's sentence back to simpler terms, it's a point much better communicated than the bible verse. Frankly the bickering in this thread is due to the original HN comment choosing a bad comparison because both sentences are poorly communicated for different reasons in this context: you wouldn't want Claude to write either.
  - ThrowawayR2 10d ago
    I'll point out that the bible verse was a translation for the common folk of their central religious document in an age where Christianity was dominant. Being able to read it smoothly is a very low bar to clear for the educated.
caidan 10d ago
My god, to read this thread is to gaze into the abyss.
- pibaker 10d ago
  Fire and brimstone upon San Francisco.
  - BlobberSnobber 10d ago
    One can only hope.
deleted 10d ago
[deleted]
voidhorse 10d ago
> Despite its bizarre look, the sentence is evocative and eloquent. No it isn't. It trades concrete imagery for empty abstractions which could encompass just about anything and are basically meaningless. If you think this is good writing, you need a serious detox from corporate America.

by esjeon 11d ago

tudelo 11d ago

Well, I can tell what sort of angle you most enjoy. Anyways -- I think there is GOOD writing and BAD writing, but only subjectively. So if you enjoy it, power to you. It's certainly not random, but it is the sort of verbosity that turns off 99 percent of the people that would read it given a comparison. I find the former rather eloquent.

crabbone 11d ago

When I read the Orwell's version, I immediately had the same feeling I had when reading mathematical proofs. I hate so much to hunt the preceding text for anaphora resolution... It's just such a bad and pretentious way of writing. It's hostile to the reader with the side of flaunting author's superiority. It's like having to sit through a party with acclaimed academics: every single one is so full of themselves, they will constantly one-up each other by belittling everyone in their workplace s.a. to make you feel how great of an intellect they possess and how much more they would accomplish, had they not been surrounded by all these bumbling idiots.

yummybrainz 10d ago
I agree that it's not great style for just conveying information clearly and plainly (e.g I'd hate to read documentation written like this) but I'd argue that here, the medium is part of the message. It's supposed to sound dry and depressing and somewhat sterile. > It's hostile to the reader with the side of flaunting author's superiority. I think if someone deliberately obfuscates meaning to sound fancier when the point is to communicate information directly, sure, I'd agree. But writing is often art, and I think demanding effort from the reader is fair in that case. I wouldn't make a blanket generalization like that.
- voidhorse 10d ago
  I disagree. There is plenty of writing that operates at the same level of abstraction (philosophy, mathematics) without being needlessly convoluted. Orwell is a master precisely because he understood language deeply enough to be able to produce a monstrosity on both the level of content (undue abstraction) and structure (winding, breathless syntax).
- crabbone 10d ago
  I agree in that I don't know in what context Orwell wrote the quote above. Maybe it made more sense the way it fitted in that context. Whenever this kind of discussion happens, I recall Andrey Platonov (a Russian writer, who was so weird in his rejection of the "decadent" parts of speech and sentence clauses that he'd never use passive voice or adverbs, would never put two adjectives side by side etc. that even Soviet censorship decided to ban him.) His works were added to the mandatory high-school reading list back around the collapse of the Soviet Union. I studied book publishing in college right around that time and had taken an elective in editing (the process of preparing a manuscript for publication, especially for the more technical fields, like encyclopedias or handbooks). My professor was a huge fan of Platonov, and, probably, forever spoiled for me whatever people enjoy when they read flamboyant or contorted prose like the one quoted above. One thing that would send my professor into a fit of rage about that quote is that the real subject is people: it's talking about how people incorrectly rationalize the connection between effort and outcome. But, it's written in a way that, formally, the subject is... "the consideration", making it necessary for the reader to work back from the formal towards intended before they can figure out what the author was really trying to say.

emmelaich 11d ago

Are you sure you're referencing the correct quote? Are you familiar with original? Did you you use AI to write this comment?

grey-area 11d ago

Read some Orwell: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

esjeon 10d ago
Ah, I just read through it. That’s was a fun read. > This is a parody, but not a very gross one. … So, Orwell wrote the second sentence as a parody of the first sentence, using the modern English that he was criticizing in the essay. > … in the middle the concrete illustrations – race, battle, bread – dissolve into the vague phrase ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. … > … The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. … > … The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. He tried to argue that the second one is worse, but, unfortunately, he successfully simulated one possible interpretation of the original. Sure, the parody has narrower meaning, but it is a valid subset of the original meaning, which is still very significant tbh. This justifies the reduction of “race, battle, bread” into “success or failure”, invalidating one of his points. Also, the parody is not necessarily less concrete. It replaced poetic expressions in the original with words that are bloated, for sure, yet more concrete. It does have awkward expressions, but every word plays a role in the sentence. This basically conflicts with one of his criticisms in the essay — meaningless words. Funnily enough, his another example — “some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism” — also fails to capture the nature of the modern English. He points out the “euphemism” towards the violence as an issue of style, but, no, that’s the whole purpose of it, and his example really just excel at it. Style-wise, again, the writing is very solid. All in all, Orwell simply failed to properly simulate what he was trying to criticize. Good examples of “modern English” can be found in the earlier part of the essay, basically written by other people. Those examples do fit into Orwell’s criticisms.
- mpalmer 10d ago
  He tried to argue that the second one is worse, but, unfortunately, he successfully simulated one possible interpretation of the original All in all, Orwell simply failed to properly simulate what he was trying to criticize If I was going to read "Orwell was wrong about English" anywhere, I guess it was always going to be HN. The sheer pomposity of your remarks here is the biggest clue that you are not writing them yourself.

yummybrainz 10d ago

I agree! Both versions are great: the former is poetic and grand and would fit right in in a fantasy text; the latter is dry and informative and requires much less mental effort to translate and extract meaning from (though still more than "normal" text. I could imagine a third version that's clearer than the second and still nearly as poetic as the first.

knollimar 10d ago

"a clear mental image from the very first word" Nothing meaningful was said for 9 words. Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that the words appearing here could be anything

mpalmer 10d ago

TBH, it would take me hours, if not days, to write a sentence this much condensed and easy to understand. This is ridiculous on its face. Did it take you 45 minutes to write your own comment?

ThrowawayR2 10d ago

To be gentle, that some here are impressed by Orwell's intentionally bad sentence indicates that they need to improve their reading and writing skills. Using complex words where they don't introduce additional precision or meaning to fake intellectualism is something basic that writing classes warn against. Fun fact for the day, someone coined a word for this type of puffed up, fake intellectual writing: lexiphanicism ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lexiphanicism https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lexiphanicism )

hombre_fatal 10d ago
Orwell's bad sentence uses harder words than it needs to, but it reworks the bible verse into direct claims. Needing better reading skills to understand the bible verse just shows that it's not a good way to communicate. If an HNer wrote like the bible verse, you'd find them insufferably ostentatious. Just like you wouldn't want Claude to use literary flair when you're asking why your production database stopped working. If you dumb down Orwell's sentence back to simpler terms, it's a point much better communicated than the bible verse. Frankly the bickering in this thread is due to the original HN comment choosing a bad comparison because both sentences are poorly communicated for different reasons in this context: you wouldn't want Claude to write either.
- ThrowawayR2 10d ago
  I'll point out that the bible verse was a translation for the common folk of their central religious document in an age where Christianity was dominant. Being able to read it smoothly is a very low bar to clear for the educated.

caidan 10d ago

My god, to read this thread is to gaze into the abyss.

pibaker 10d ago
Fire and brimstone upon San Francisco.
- BlobberSnobber 10d ago
  One can only hope.

deleted 10d ago

[deleted]

voidhorse 10d ago

> Despite its bizarre look, the sentence is evocative and eloquent. No it isn't. It trades concrete imagery for empty abstractions which could encompass just about anything and are basically meaningless. If you think this is good writing, you need a serious detox from corporate America.