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Day’s Verse:
Who is the King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory.
Psalm 24:10
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I want to scream
I want to shout
I want to howl
At the lurking work;
But most of all
I want to flee.
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I found this fantastically true quote in Politics and the English Language, an excellent essay (which everybody should read – I laughed aloud in the library as I read it, and you will laugh too, I promise) by George Orwell:
In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.
– KF –
I read almost the whole essay. His numbered lists of basic rules are good. You do a lot of academic reading–o you think a lot of writing is bad in the way he describes it?
OHMYGOSH. He’s so right-on it’s not even funny–or maybe I should say it is funny. Take an random sample from a book I have to read right now in Visual Design called Reading Images: Lowered naturalistic modality, however, is not a defining characteristic of analytic visuals. Modality forms a separate (interactional) system which is present in visuals simultaneously with the kinds of structure we are describing in this chapter. At most we can say that in specific social context, there is a tendencey for certain modality cohices to go together with certain representational choices, certain kinds of processes (93). Orwell wasn’t kidding when he said that “words and meaning have almost parted company” in this type of writing!