Stop the Gibberish: George Orwell's Timeless Writing Advice

Some writers show off, some communicate effectively

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

Let’s have a look at George Orwell’s writing guidelines (annotated by M. K. Pelland) from his essay Politics and the English Language.

He wrote this piece more than 80 years ago, and so it is part of the public domain. I’ll kindly and graciously share it with you in the hopes that fewer writers may resort to bloviated, puffed-up language when trying to communicate something of value to us readers. If you feel criticized or offended, you may be just the person who needs this information the most.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you have seen in print before. It’s pretty compelling to describe anxious characters like this: “They dripped sweat and trembled like squirrels in traffic.” Or would you rather resort to “he was shaking like a leaf”?

2. Never use a long word where a shorter, clearer one will do.
   “It is far more advantageous and judicious to refrain from employing an elongated and sesquipedalian term when a succinct and concise one will suffice admirably” means the same thing. If I use the second version, I may feel proud of myself for being way more intellectual than the riffraff, but I can be assured that a whole lot of people clicked away before they got halfway through. Straightforward language does not make a reader stop to parse what I said. It makes my writing enjoyable to read and easy to understand. Would you call the story of The Maltese Falcon an incomprehensibility, or is it simply a mystery?

3. If you can cut a word out, then do it. Always. Every time.
   In that last sentence, I can cut always or every time or both. Tight writing is better, more engaging writing. Orwell built huge, convincing worlds more succinctly than unskilled writers describe a living room. I do not sound smarter when I throw in filler words or three modifiers to describe a sunny day. Look up the last paragraph you wrote. Cut out 25% of it. I know you can. How many times do we need to be told this before it sinks in?

4. For the love of God, don’t use the passive where you can use the active. Passive works when the agent performing an action does not have to be described or doesn’t matter. It works when I want the agent to be less important than the action. I use passive voice when I want to call attention to the action or its object instead of the agent. Example: “Rules are made to be broken” works better than “Authorities make rules so you can break them.” It’s also tighter. Some ineffective passives: The east is where the sun rises from; It was then that I knew that he would not be my friend; Some additional reasons to not follow rules can be enumerated as follows. See? Hard to grok.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
   Think about Neil deGrasse Tyson. He’s entertaining and hugely popular, partly because he talks about complex ideas without ever using technical or scientific language that he doesn’t clearly explain. And why say “Bon mot” when you mean “Clever remark”? The French version seems like it might make you seem brilliant when, in fact, it annoys readers trying to focus on your method. Do you want readers to think about you or to connect with your story?

6. Break any of these rules rather than write anything outright barbarous. I’ve never seen a rule that is always correct. You and I and all other writers are unique in voice, style, message, goals, and skill-level. If you know these rules and understand their import, it’s your responsibility to understand when to bend or break them. If you proofread and re-read your work and it conveys what you meant to convey, don’t get your undies in a wad over exactly which rules you adhered to perfectly. Be objective. Make your writing about the story you’re telling and be certain it isn’t more about what a “great” writer you are. You, the writer, should be a transparent enhancement, not the primary focus of what’s on the page.

Now about George Orwell — skip this if you don’t like an interesting tale

Once upon a time, Eric Arthur Blair was a British writer — a novelist, essayist, and journalist. You will know him as George Orwell, a pen name. George was born in India and died of tuberculosis in 1950 in London at age 46, a shame. He named himself George Orwell so as to avoid embarrassing his parents with some of what he wrote, and also because he detested the name Eric.

This author of Animal Farm published his first writings in campus publications at Eton, where Aldous Huxley was one of his masters.

Here’s a relatable tidbit for any serious writer. George juggled a myriad of part-time jobs to augment his writing income. Don’t we all? He worked as a police officer in Burma (Myanmar), a teacher, and a dishwasher, among other endeavors.

I discovered that he coined the term cold war. In an essay written within weeks of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945), You and the Atom Bomb, he so-labeled the tensions between the US and the Soviet Union.

One day in 1947, while taking a breather from writing, George went boating with his son, niece, and nephew on the Gulf of Corryvreckan in western Scotland — known for the world’s third-largest whirlpool. They capsized, were thrown overboard, and got sucked into the vortex. They all made it out alive, and George went home to pen Nineteen Eighty-Four or 1984 (originally called The Last Man in Europe). He died about half a year later.

Eric Arthur Blair always said he became a writer because he wanted to change the world — it can be argued that he did have an impact. He said, “Unchecked propaganda will lead to ceaseless injustice for the masses,” and that opinion is continuously reflected in his work.

The man took his writing seriously and learned as much as he could about the craft. Therefore, go thou, exercise caution when pressing the “publish” button, and refrain from composing content that you shouldn’t be proud of.