George Orwell is best known today for writing 1984 and Animal Farm, but he was also very active in politics. To help others write better prose, he penned an essay, Politics and the English Language in 1946. Orwell's rules for clean writing follow:
In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them.
When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if
you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably
hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you
think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the
start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the
existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the
expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better
to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as
clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can
choose–not simply accept–the phrases that will best cover the meaning,
and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely
to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all
stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions,
and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about
the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely
on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most
cases:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are
used to seeing in print.
2. Never us a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if
you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Paul Landmann discusses these rules–and more–in Coyote Theory: Writing for Success.
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