Orwell and Swan Posts

I understand that this might be an unpopular opinion, but I don't care what Orwell thinks about writing as an art form. Just because someone uses big words doesn't inherently make them circumlocutious (a word which I'm sure Orwell, and apparently google, disapproves of, as it is most certainly a correctly spelled word though still has the infamous red underline). Furthermore, his harsh, judgmental, almost bored holier-than-thou tone and sweeping generalizations lend absolutely nothing to his argument and only give grounds to indefensible strawmen. He just sounds like the incredibly privileged conspiracy theorist who was in the right place at the right time that he is. I won't apologize for my harsh language choice, as it mirrors the style of Orwell's sacred opinion on writing. He speaks from absolutely no credibility, as being a professional writer gives you absolutely zero authority to say what is and is not good writing, as writing is incredibly multifaceted and there are certainly no two great works of literature that follow the same formula, and in writing there really are no true rules. Grammar itself is not a set in stone code, as some of the most famous writers in literature often make stylistic choices to ignore it (as much as e.e. cummings is not my cup of tea, there's no denying he's made his mark on the history of poetry). The real nail in the coffin in this piece of writing (after finally moving on from him calling the word "romantic" completely meaningless, and the word "objective" pretentious), when he asked, in reference to his spiel about metaphors, "What is a rift, for instance?" as if that's something that not every literate 12-year-old knows the answer to. In short, I gleaned nothing from this passage and am tired of overprivileged white guys telling me how to write which is an objectively ridiculous concept.

Note: In the post above I have taken special care to include at least one dying metaphor, meaningless word, pretentious word, and verbal false limb, and I'd be shocked if anyone even noticed, let alone wrote off the entire paragraph because I apparently broke every rule of holy Orwellian literature.

Conversely, the Gopen and Swan article actually make strides in analyzing the impact certain types of scientific writing have on the reader. Knowing extremely little about science (it was always my worst subject), and even less about scientific writing (why write about science when you could write about magic or feminism?) I feel that from this article I actually learned information I may not have thought about before about this unfamiliar genre of writing. Specifically, it drew parallels and made connections between reading and interpreting science and more traditional writing. As an extremely language oriented person, this piece even made me feel a little more comfortable with the idea of scientific reading, displaying it as something not completely foreign and inscrutable to us mathematically challenged learners, which I personally found very valuable.