That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
This is far too true. There are so many words that are more labels than words with meaning. Slapping democratic on something tends to denote that that thing is good.
The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable
This is definitely true. If I'm being honest, I don't fully know what fascism is, I just know that it's bad.
Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purposes verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render.
This can definitely cause confusion. Simple words that can replace an entire phrase will surely make a passage clearer.
A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks.
Orwell is getting at a "postive feeback loop". Not positive in the good sense, but positive in the sense that feeding a bad feeling with booze only increases the bad feeling and the cycle continues.
Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
I suppose, if we allow it, our language can become worsened by treating it as tool that controls us rather than a tool that we control
It may seem obvious that a scientific document is incomplete without the interpretation of the writer; it may not be so obvious that the document cannot "exist" without the interpretation of each reader.
In truth, what is a writing worth if no one reads it? The hope is that someone reads it and so we have to write with the audience's interpretation in mind.
Without the stress position's locational clue that its material is intended to be emphasized, readers are left too much to their own devices in deciding just what else in a sentence might be considered important.
This is particularly prevelant in long setences that end up being extremely anti-climactic. Like going through a long discourse on how experiements went only to find that there were no significant results.
Long sentences need not be difficult to read; they are only difficult to write.
The strain should be on the writer, not on the reader.
As the complexity of the context increases moderately, the possibility of misinterpretation or noninterpretation increases dramatically.
This makes sense. I suppose there's a lot of things I've misinterpreted and those misinterpretations likely stem from complexity or overcomplication
Improving the quality of writing actually improves the quality of thought.
Writing really is the essence of our thoughts. In turn, if the quality of our writing improves, it can be assumed that the quality of thought has also improved
have a clear idea of which kind of information you need to get in the first place, and then focus on that aspect
I suppose the idea is we are trying to weaponize these articles for our benefit. We have to make sure we know what information we want and then find it.
The conclusions help me understand if the goal summarized in the abstract has been reached, and if the described work can be of interest for my own study
This is good to know actually. It would absolutely suck to read an entire article only to find that the results were inconclusive or not successful.
I start by reading the abstract. Then, I skim the introduction and flip through the article to look at the figures. I try to identify the most prominent one or two figures, and I really make sure I understand what's going on in them. Then, I read the conclusion/summary. Only when I have done that will I go back into the technical details to clarify any questions I might have.
Interesting. So basically, you only read 10% of the paper and then go off of that? That would for sure make my life easier.
Determination. All righty. Really gonna read this time. Really gonna do it. Yup, yuppers, yup-a-roo, readin' words is what you do. Let's just point those pupils at the dried ink on the page, and …
Yep. I usually find myself distracted and then after a good while has passed, I get into the determination stage and then it depends on my mood how long that lasts.
Realization that 15 minutes have gone by and you haven't progressed to the next sentence.
SO TRUE. Hard tasks are just a recipe for distraction. I don't even like instagram and I find myself on it when I'm faced with a hard task.
I placed the paper on a large empty desk. I eliminated all other distractions. To avoid interruptions from friends encouraging alcohol consumption, as friends do in college, I sat in an obscure anteroom with no foot traffic. To avoid interruptions from cellphone calls, I made sure it was 1999.
This sounds like Computer Science projects. Sometimes they're so daunting for me that I just have to eliminate all distractions and just get started.