Informal language Essay Example

made sentences shorter and less awkward. Other words have been substitutes as they have represented inclusive terms that clarify unarticulated connections between previous ideas. One such sentence originally read, “The complexity and richness of an author’s writing will come, Orwell says, after a sort of maturity is reached. ” This was modified to “From this discovery, Orwell surmises that the complexity and richness of an author’s writing develops after having achieved a certain level of maturity. Replacing the phrase “Orwell says” with “Orwell surmises” conveys the idea that he makes the subsequent idea known in the essay.

However, the word “surmises” adds to this the understanding that this knowledge was achieved as a result of the self-analysis mentioned in the previous sentence. Other modifications made to the sentence represent the conversion of the passive to the active voice, giving the sentence a slightly more energetic feel. Other changes that were made to the first draft included the removal of some inadvertent sexist language.

While I had taken care to be inclusive in my use of pronouns—that is, making my pronouns as gender non-specific as possible—some uses of the pronoun “he” were found to have been overlooked. To these revisions were added some modifications to sentence structure which were made to clarify the meaning of the sentence, improve its precision, and to remove some wordiness and unnecessary repetition. One such change saw was made to a pair of sentence which read: “It sounds simple to say that before something can be written, the writer must understand why he is writing it.

For many, Orwell’s message that one must understand why he writes in order to write well seems to

be simple, even almost elementary for the most unsophisticated writer. ” It can be seen that both sentences repeat the idea of understanding the reasons behind writing. The changes eliminate this repetition by simply referring to the idea using the phrase “Since this is precisely Orwell’s message” as a referent. Furthermore, the crude phrase “It sounds simple to say that…” is replaced with “might seem a simplistic and obvious statement to make.

This improvement represents another example of the refinement of diction that has been characteristic of the entire revision process. The revision process has already been described as being characterized by the refinement of diction to increase the formality of the essay’s effect. This has also been done through the removal of several contracted phrases that were also inadvertently included in the essay.

Such contractions as “didn’t” and “hadn’t” were replaced with their more formal and extended equivalents, “did not” and “had not. Other refining methods have included the removal of unnecessary phrases that served only to elongate the sentence and in several cases to unnecessarily complicate it. In the sentence “his early writings did nothing less than foster his own ability to recognize what those motives would eventually be,” the phrase “did nothing less than” was removed. It was decided that the phrase simply added four words to the sentence length without giving any additional information. This achievement of conciseness was also the reasoning behind changing the title.

In one area I discovered I had used an old cliche that weakened the work. The particular cliche was “Without bad there can be no good” and was used to illustrate that Orwell’s development as a writer dependent

on those early years of maturity and would never have occurred without them. Since it was necessary for the saying to remain in the essay for purposes of comparison, I modified the paragraph to make it clear that I as a writer understood the trite way in which cliches are usually viewed. Therefore, the use of the cliche became more instructional and no longer indicated ignorance of literary conventions.

Other cliche-like phrases have also been detected and removed, such as “deepest, darkest” and “coming of age. ” One specific problem encountered while revising was found in a paragraph that strangely ended with what resembled a topic sentence. It read, “The word “politics” has a number of definitions, but for the purposes of this particular work, Orwell identifies “politics” in terms of the social dynamics of people and societies. ” Upon arriving at this sentence, the paragraph was suddenly thrown into disarray and all comprehension ceased.

Reading the work with a fresh eye allowed me to realize that the sentence was better suited for the beginning of the succeeding paragraph, and the change improved the arrangement and cohesiveness of both paragraphs. Also for the purposes of improving the works cohesiveness, a few changes to the verbs were necessary to make the tenses more consistent. The revision of the first draft of my paper on George Orwell’s essay “Why I Write” represented an exercise in refinement. The ideas expressed in the first version of the paper were very good and demonstrated a thorough understanding of the message being communicated in Orwell’s essay.

However, several flaws were found that detracted from the sophistication and formality. The use of informal diction and

round-about phrases were replaced by more precise and formal terms. Where conciseness was lacking, improvements were made by using more encompassing terms. Similarly, where conciseness was achieved at the expense of meaning, efforts were made to elaborate and thereby clarify the essay’s meaning. Structural problems relating to topic sentences were also dealt with, and all changes served to improve the overall effect of the essay.