Author George Orwell is best known for his books 1984 andAnimal Farm. He was an English novelist whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair, according to the Orwell Foundation.
Orwell was a prolific writer known for his politically themed novels and essays. His life came to an end in 1950 at just 46 years old after a battle with advanced tuberculosis. But in those short years, his writing came to inspire millions of readers around the world.
In 1946, Orwell shared a few of his writing rules with readers in an essay titled “Politics and the English Language.” The essay features Orwell’s commentary on the craft of writing, according to Douglas E. Abrams, a University of Missouri law professor. In his paper “Orwell’s Six Cures to Bad Writing,” Abrams writes that for Orwell, “Good writing depends on sound grammar, spelling, style, and syntax, but it also depends on willingness to bend or break the ‘rules’ when advisable.”
Orwell didn’t hold back his opinion
Orwell warned that the English language is “in a bad way,” and Abrams summarizes his diagnosis this way: “debased” prose was marked by “abuse,” “slovenliness,” and a “lifeless, imitative style” nearly devoid of “a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech,” while a “tendency … away from concreteness” had left writing “dreary,” “ugly and inaccurate.” Orwell’s verdict: “This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing.”
Specifically, Orwell shared six rules he stood by to help others write clearly and concisely.
Orwell wrote that choosing your words and then deciding what impression they’ll make on the reader “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,” he wrote. “I think the following rules will cover most cases.”
George Orwell’s Six Rules for Writing
- 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.
80 years later, it still holds up
Although Orwell’s advice dates back to 1946, writers today still credit his tips with making them better writers. People on Reddit shared how his rules have impacted their ability to write.
“George Orwell’s writing advice is amazingly instructive when it comes to writing with clarity,” one person wrote.
Another commented, “Following the first two rules changed my writing completely (for the better), I think sometime in college. I think people mistake those rules to mean ‘always use a shorter word or fewer words,’ which isn’t the case. But it takes some experience to figure out good exceptions to the rules.”
Another writer noted, “I think it’s literally follow 1-5, unless it reads better to break them, then use 6. If you aren’t writing for yourself, write something your readers will understand without a dictionary or reference texts. Knowing your audience is extremely important; I feel these rules are especially important when writing about fields with their own ‘language’ (words used in ways the common person would not assume).”
This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.
