{"id":3210,"date":"2005-10-19T10:19:59","date_gmt":"2005-10-19T17:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2005\/10\/19\/3210.html"},"modified":"2005-10-19T10:19:59","modified_gmt":"2005-10-19T17:19:59","slug":"orwell-on-writing-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2005\/10\/19\/orwell-on-writing-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Orwell on writing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Vardibidian's comments on The Elements of Style<\/cite><\/a> indirectly brought to mind George Orwell's 1946 essay \"Politics and the English Language<\/a>.\" Which in turn led me to notice that I had never posted the bits of that piece that I particularly like, though I did once post a link to the essay.<\/p>\n

I tend to roll my eyes at Orwell's comments about the \"slovenliness\" and \"decline\" of English, but I think the specific guidelines he suggests are good ones, especially for writing nonfiction. Especially if you consider them to be guidelines rather than rules. I have the following, excerpted from the essay, pinned to the wall above my desk at work:<\/p>\n

\n

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What am I trying to say?<\/li>\n
  2. What words will express it?<\/li>\n
  3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?<\/li>\n
  4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And he will probably ask himself two more:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Could I put it more shortly?<\/li>\n
    2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      [...]<\/p>\n

      I think the following rules will cover most cases:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.<\/li>\n
      2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.<\/li>\n
      3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. [Or: \"Omit needless words.\" --Jed]<\/li>\n
      4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.<\/li>\n
      5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.<\/li>\n
      6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Vardibidian’s comments on The Elements of Style indirectly brought to mind George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commonplace-book"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}