Orwell on Clarity of Language
Every person who writes, whether for business or otherwise, should read this essay. Though his focus is on political language, I believe Orwell’s arguments are equally valid for almost all business-related writing.
Too long, didn’t read? This is the executive summary:
- 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 barbarous.
Orwell’s main argument is that by using overly-verbose yet imprecise language, we detract from the effectiveness of our message. I agree with him, to a point; there should still be room for playful and personal elements in writing, but not at the expense of clarity or logic.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. You can probably stop now, below are some my own thoughts on the matter, which are almost certainly less developed and consistent than Orwell’s.
It is an unfortunate thing that the quantity of business writing is often conflated with its quality. Why this is, is a good question. My best guess is that good English, like good Java, Ruby or whatever, is actually very hard to produce. The incredibly large amount of it that has already been published wrongfully implies that it’s easy, and when you add a general human incompetence factor, you end up with somewhat of a problem: people spending a lot of time and effort writing documents that no one reads, understands or enjoys. That can’t make good business sense, can it?
