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Thanks for the recommendation! I took precisely two useful things from Strunk & White ("avoid structuring a sentence so that two associated words or concepts ar

by scubbo 4y ago

Thanks for the recommendation! I took precisely two useful things from Strunk & White ("avoid structuring a sentence so that two associated words or concepts are far apart - re-order so that they are close together" and "where possible, replace negations with standalone terms - 'short' instead of 'not tall'"), the rest was disappointing. The section on email made it clear how out-of-touch they were!

klodolph 4y ago
Style has the same advice about structuring sentences so that associated words are close, and it comes with exercises and examples of how to achieve this in practice.
staplung 4y ago
Amusingly, the Orwell piece itself mentions a particularly stupid sub-species of the "not X"; namely, the "not un-X" (e.g. "not untall" instead of just "tall"). In a footnote he says: "One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field."