George Orwell and David Foster Wallace on Writing

John Leo's piece about good writing makes a direct reference to George Orwell's great essay on how poor use of language leads to worse political thinking, "Politics and the English Language." Thankfully, we can read Orwell on the Internet today. Orwell isn't always easy to understand, but I don't think I go too far when I saw that if you read nothing else about how to write, you should read this essay.

David Foster Wallace wrote a long essay, "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage" in "Harper's" in 2001. Wallace then revised and lengthened the essay for publication in "Consider the Lobster," his 2005 collection, now available in paperback. I don't know how, but Wallace manages to show off a huge vocabulary, add seemingly endless notes, and still make perfect sense throughout. In either version, "Tense Present" is a worthy successor to Orwell.