Newspeak and Orwell English
Some critics say that “no dictionary ever inspired three generations of boring writers like George Orwell did,” but I say to hell with them! Prose should be clear, not convoluted. Go spew your verbal diarrhoea elsewhere. When it comes to writing: less can be more. When it comes to reading: vague rambling sentences just come across as gibberish, which has no other use than to give one a headache!
Read and heed:
Remedy of Six Rules
- 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.
A good example of clear and honest language from the King James Bible:
“I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
- Ecclesiastes 9:11
An example of unclear and verbose language from George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”:
“Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”
