Beginning on August 9, you can seek a wide, personal view of George Orwell over at the Orwell Diaries. Published online 70 years to the day after they were written, his diary entries will allow the reader to follow Orwell into World War II.

Orwell was a big critic of English writers. He thought too many authors use vague language that renders prose abstract and impotent whereas it could be concrete and meaningful. In "Politics and the English Language," he listed six rules for writers to reverse such habits:

• 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 voice 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.

Excellent rules to follow. Incidentally, I take this opportunity to recommend Nineteen Eighty-Four, which I read for the third time last year. If you haven't read it, please do. There's also a decent movie, a free online edition of the text, a comic, and an NBC radio adaptation from 1949 that's available for download. There are rumors of a new film to be released in 2009 or later, with Tim Robbins as director. He began directing the play at the Actors' Gang in 2006.