Using and Ruining English

In this challenging essay, Richard Jenkyns, a professor of classics at Oxford, reviews several contemporary books on English usage and offers his own insights on the topic. The piece is well worth the time of anyone interested in reading and writing more carefully. A key excerpt and a convincing conclusion:

"People still distrust the politicians - at a guess, they distrust them more now than they did then - but the rant that Orwell attacked now seems quaint and dated. For him, too much heat was the danger; now the enemies of clarity and honesty are euphemism, waffle and evasion. Perhaps the most depressing part of Orwell's essay, when we read it now, is his sample of academic writing, for prolix and obscure though it is, one's first reaction is to wonder what the fuss is about: it is so much better than a great deal of today's professorial prose. The public suspects that much academic production is fraudulent, and they are partly right. Since one of Orwell's targets was imprecision of thought, it is interesting to observe how frequently the word 'precisely' is found in a certain type of academic prose, almost always used where 'imprecisely' would be more accurate. You can diagnose weak thought from dead language as you can diagnose firedamp from a dead canary, and 'precisely' is a dead adverb. It is an example of what Orwell called a meaningless word, an upmarket version of 'literally,' as in: 'He literally wiped the floor with his opponent.' In other terms, it is a bad faith word - a symptom of bluster, vagueness or vacuity."

"We should learn educated English, as we should learn to spell, if only because it is a certificate of competence."