False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

Part of the challenge of good writing is coming 
up with new expressions and ways of rephrasing 
clichés like “blazing inferno,” “hammered out a 
deal,” “last-ditch effort,” “pool of blood” and so 
on.
As long as we care about meaning, good 
writing is a powerful antidote to a post-truth 
society.
In his classic book 1984, George Orwell 
invented “Newspeak,” a form of language that 
both diminishes the meaning of certain words 
and eliminates free thought.
In Orwell’s book, a totalitarian government has 
implemented a plan to have every citizen 
communicate solely in Newspeak by the year 
2050. Well, recent events have shown that we 
might be running ahead of schedule since the 
true meaning of words are already being 
dangerously manipulated by politicians.
As Roger Cohen, a columnist for the New York 
Times, put it: “Emptying words of their meaning 
is an essential step on the road to autocratic 
rule.” Part of what Cohen was commenting on 
was Donald Trump’s boast that he won a 
“landslide” victory and that members of the 
media are “among the most dishonest human 
beings on earth.”
Scottie Nell Hughes, a representative of the 
right-wing Tea Party, was on the Diane Rehm 
Show when she said, “People say facts are facts 
– but they’re not really facts.”
Frequently, we hear Donald Trump and other 
notable 
politicians 
using 
words 
like 
“challengeable” and “questionable” to cast doubt 
on what are, in fact, facts.
Both the humanitarian author Hannah Arendt 
and the satirical writer Jonathan Swift wrote 
about the dangers of the “political lie.” They 
pointed out the big difference between saying 
something dishonest as a way to avoid trouble 
and telling a lie as a way to “disempower facts” 
and create a “fictional narrative.”
This is why it’s of great importance that we fight 
back against these attacks on truth with good 
writing.
It’s up to us to keep the truth alive, and to do 
that, we need to use the right words and show 
that we care about their real meaning. This 
includes knowing when to use “effect” or “affect,” 
“continual” or “continuous,” “loan” or “lend” and 
“reign” or “rein.”