How to break the habit of writing bad English

In 1946, George Orwell published an essay, Politics and the English Language (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm). Although the essay has a political slant, storytellers who would like to learn the art of storytelling should read this article in its entirety. The essay shows how people develop a bad writing habit and how to break this habit. What I have done, in this article, is to pick out the most relevant bits of what Mr. Orwell wrote and highlight them for you:

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. … A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. ... Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. …

 

In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. … Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meaning which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. …

 

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. …

 

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 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 he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? …

 

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the words thing one can do with words is surrender to them…. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose – not simply accept – the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one’s words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or missed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect or a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, similie, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner that say anything outright barbarous.

 

Since you don’t know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring aobut some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase…into the dustbin where it belongs.

Aneeta Sundararaj is the author of How To Tell A Great Story. This ebook, which is now in its 7th edition, caters for beginners to storytelling and in particular, how storytelling can be used in every day life. The author of this popular ebook is Aneeta Sundararaj. Aneeta also manages the newsletter, Great StoryTelling Network. To find out more, visit http://www.howtotellagreatstory.com.