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George Orwell’s 6 rules for writers

mclasen’s posterous reading list
March 19, 2012 3:53 PM

George Orwell’s 6 rules for writers

In 1946, George Orwell laid out his theories on writing in an essay titled “Politics and the English Language.” Orwell criticized the use of complicated language and promoted clear, simple prose whenever possible. The essay concluded with six rules summarizing Orwell’s opinion.

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.

Via Lists of Note.

Improve your writing.

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Finally: A truly magical iPad

The secret of the new iPad

Revealed

Cult of Mac
March 17, 2012 10:22 AM
by Mike Elgan

Finally: A truly magical iPad

Everybody’s excited about the new Apple iPad‘s high-resolution screen. But ultimately, the Retina display is just a pretty face. It can’t do anything that the screens on previous models couldn’t do.

In fact, just about all of the features that are considered “new” in the newiPad are really just bigger helpings of the old capabilities: More pixels on the screen. More graphics performance. More megapixels in the camera. More megabits per second with the mobile broadband connection. There’s more of everything. But what’s fundamentally different?

One of the least appreciated new features is one that truly brings entirely new capabilities to the iPad. That feature is Bluetooth 4.0 support.

Read this column at the Computerworld.com site.