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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 c
by 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 agoOrwell'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 agoI'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.