on the qualities
of effective writing
George Orwell: Big Brother’s Father on Writing
Advice from a 68-year-old essay still rings true today.
Let’s say I write a passage like this:
Medical practitioners indicate the most effective change catalyst for proactive weight reduction is to downsize average daily caloric intake.
Instead of:
Doctors say the best way to lose weight is to eat less.
What would George Orwell say? He wouldn’t be very happy.
In 1946 Orwell penned an essay, criticizing the “pretentious diction” of “Modern English.” Here’s part of what he wrote:
Bad writers … are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous … constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.
He’s right. English was once the language of “barbarians,” while Latin was the “civilized” intellectual language. In polite company, for example, you’d refer to the Latin-based term defecation instead of … well, that other word. But the Saxon words are less cerebral and more genuine. For example, consider the difference between the words “fair” (Saxon) and “equitable” (Latin).
A biblical translation:
One excellent excerpt from Orwell’s essay uses this biblical passage from Ecclesiastes:
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.
Orwell says this is how it would read in “Modern English.”
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.
Curable?
In his essay, Orwell says that the “decadence of our language is probably curable.”
I’m not so sure, George. Much of your own legacy lives on
in phrases such as Big Brother, Thought Police,
and even your name — Orwellian.
But don’t fret. I’m sure we can prioritize a best-of-breed paradigm to operationalize a sea change in the linguistic infrastructure.
