Orwell and English prose

In his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell cites this from Harold Laski: “I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.” Parse that if you can.

This, along with four other examples, illustrate what Orwell saw as two leading problems with English writing: “first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.”

Orwell ended his essay with six rules for writing:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use 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.

To which the recent Economist’s Style Guide adds a few more:

Do not be too stuffy. Use the language of everyday speech.
Do not be too chatty.
Do not be too didactic.
Do your best to be lucid.
Do not be too pleased with yourself.

The last of these indicates that good writing is as much a moral as an aesthetic matter.