My New Year's Resolution: Simplify
- simplify life
- simplify writing
While "simplify life" means to avoid clutter and distraction (and add that which is meaningful), particular attention will go to my communications. These seem like good guides per George Orwell in ‘Politics and the English language’:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Tip of the Hat to Eamon Cary and his Medium article on the same subject.
