Unpacking George Orwell's Six Elementary Rules for Writing
“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” - George Orwell
I came to George Orwell’s books and essays pretty late in life. Despite studying literature and spending most of my life as an avid reader, I’d never felt compelled to read his work. In my late twenties, a beaten-up copy of 1984 found it’s way into my hands and so begun an exploration.
1984 was eyeopening and vivid. Torturous and confronting. It’s no surprise it’s often cited as one of Orwell’s greats (although I personal enjoyed Down and Out in Paris and London, and Coming Up For Air a tiny bit more)
There is so much wrapped up in 1984, but one of the biggest themes Orwell explores is around the corruption and diminishment of language. In a memorable scene, the main character Winston is having lunch with a man, Syme, who is working on a revised dictionary or Newspeak: a controlled language with restricted vocabulary and grammar. The purpose of the dictionary is to limit freedom of thought through controlling the words society is allowed to speak. If there are no words to describe or communicate a rebellion against the state, it cannot happen. If society does not have the words to think their ThoughtCrimes, they cannot think them.
Orwell made no secret of his concerns and fears around the declining state of the English language, and while he used 1984 as a platform to boldly express these fears, he wrote about them in a more direct manner in an essay published a few months before, titled ‘Politics and the English Language’.
It was in this same essay that Orwell introduced his six rules for writing.
Six Rules for Writing According to Orwell
Politics and the English Language opens with the following line:
“Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.”
Orwell goes on to highlight that the ways the modern writer approaches their writing could help to improve what he saw as the declining state of language. In Orwell’s mind, writers have a responsibility to use their work to restore the power and meaning back to language. Words were, and are, the most powerful thing we have as a society, whether written or spoken. Orwell knew this well.
In his essay, Orwell goes on to list six rules for writing that he believed would prevent the further decline and restriction of language:
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.
On first reading the rules, I was a little dumbfounded. Orwell’s assertion to battle the restrictive use of language seemed to be in contradiction with the rules he proposed for writers. The use of ‘never’ and ‘always’ feels like an absolute - that the rules must never be broken or strayed from. To me, this itself felt restrictive.
The list of rules seems to set in place an almost impossible standard or writers.
But Orwell knew this.
Throughout the remainder of the essay, Orwell himself does not adhere to the rules he sets out. The point of introducing the rules, and the accompanying essay, was not to put in place tough unbreakable standards regarding writers use of language. The purpose was to encourage writers to think more deeply about their word choices, to care enough to reflect and consider the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of specific word and sentence choices. The rules are a call to clarity, truth and whether what the writer is trying to say is of value. Orwell asserts that the purpose of language is for truth and expression - so the words we use need to be carefully selected in order to reflect this.
Orwell goes on to say that every writer must ask themselves at least four questions:
What am I trying to say?
What words will express it?
What image or idiom will make it clearer?
Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
And that they should go on to ask themselves two more:
Could I put it more shortly?
Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
What Orwell brings us back to, is the power of our words and their ability to move those who read and hear them. The power of good writing is in it’s ability to make others feel, to laugh or cry, to find joy or empathise with sadness. To connect and feel connected as a society above and beyond the individual. Language can tell stories or sing songs, it can teach and discover, and most of all it can tell the truth. Orwell knew that language is a a gift and one we should take better care of.
With his rules, Orwell was attempting to remind writers (and everyone) of the power that comes with using words to tell our stories, and that we need to be mindful when wielding that power. He is not calling for a rigidity or ruthless approach to language, he is instead calling for writers to own their vocation. To speak their truth with clear, simple, purposeful and communicative language, so that many people can read, hear and learn the stories and truth we seek to tell.
Without ambiguity.
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.” - George Orwell
