Rules, Rules, Rules,.... Break the Rules?

First of all I just want to point out, I really do not know how to respond to this.

   While I was reading I felt like I was being told that I was stupid since I know that I do the things George Orwell was talking about. At some points I even felt as if i was being hit with an literary brick, but I do not see myself as a failure. The five examples he used at the beginning weren't that bad. At least not to me. I meant yes I could see where they needed work, made no sense, or just rambled on about something, but they were not terrible. Just because the selections didn't look exactly right doesn't mean anything. In my view it's more of a personal opinion. I'm sure that if Orwell saw our writing now or even the way many of us text with all the short-hands, he would have more to say than what was in the article.

   Something else that bothered me as I read was the fact that Orwell seemed to put down the use of Latin based words. I can't say that the Saxon vocabulary is less valuable than the Latin vocabulary, but there is no reason to be, or seem to be, putting it down. There are many words that we have in our vocabulary that came from Latin as well as Saxon that I can't think of not existing. As Orwell states in the sixteenth (i think anyway) paragraph "A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outside and covering up the details." I don't see this as true. Yes, some of the words are complicated, but a word on its own does not "cover up" anything. A word can be read by its surrounding words. I can usually find what a word means by using the context of the sentence.

   In response to Orwell's six rules, This is where I got confused and asked myself what the point was. All of these rules have their own flaws, especially the last one. He goes through and puts all these rules that he uses then the last rule says, in my understanding, "break the rules sooner than say anything against them." So basically follow the rules, but break them when you need to? Is this what he meant? Looking at them, the rules are not that horrendous (and yes I just broke rule 2), but what is written depends on what is needed to be said and the occasion. If you are reporting on something knowledgeable, you don't want to sound like your vocabulary only consists of small words or non-scientific words. Then again, if you are trying to explain something to someone that has no idea what you are talking about, you'd want to use small, everyday English words. This is where it depends on the occasion, setting, or overall need.

   In the end, I do agree with most of what Orwell says. Given that there are reasons to break the rules and situations that are excluded from his rules. The English language is crumbling around us. Many, including myself, put to many words or don't organize sentences correctly. That and there are just to many words that I can possible use for any given idea. I do believe what Orwell says about the English language being "full of bad habits... which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble." I know that there is more to what I can learn about writing and the best way to do so. The example about "failure" at the beginning of the article was one of the few things that hit right off. For writing, and anything else for that matter, it fits just the same. If you consider yourself a failure at writing, then later when you try to write again you will only fail more. This is what I believe. More so since if you give up, it becomes harder to get back into something that you feel that you will only fail at again. So that's why I don't consider myself a failure when I don't finish one of my stories, I just keep pushing forward and come back to it later.