George Orwell was an intelligent man, and after reading this essay (link courtesy of Jon) I don’t think any further evidence of that fact need be presented. (Read the article in context.)
Orwell, in 1946, was writing about what he saw as the decline of the English language. To a certain extent I agree with him, and not simply because his logic is sound and his argument convincing. I agree with him because when he cites certain passages as meaningless (or as containing less meaning, such as his re-writing of the passage from Ecclesiastes), I can say, with just a hint of shame, that I actually understand them. This seems like a paradox, since I am saying that I understand passages that are devoid of meaning, but it isn’t. I understand those passages because I have encountered those phrases before, and have memorized their meanings. This kind of language is dead, and any reasonably literate person (myself included) is doing themselves a disservice by using it.
Orwell proposes a solution to the proliferation of this kind of writing, and it’s so useful a proposal that it is worth quoting at length:
What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. 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:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.
I’ve fallen into the traps that Orwell mentions, and do so with alarming frequency. And so do many of the people, especially online, that I know and respect. I won’t name names; you know who you are. These six rules of Orwell’s read like many of the available guides to writing online, and indeed read much like a condensed version of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. My conclusion? Good writing is good writing, whether in print or online.
