18/09/2014
George Orwell on
Writing, How to
Counter the Mindless
Momentum of
Language, and the
Four Questions a
Great Writer Must
Ask Herself
by Maria Popova
“By using stale metaphors,
similes and idioms, you
save much mental effort, at
the cost of leaving your
meaning vague, not only for
your reader but for
yourself.”
George Orwell was a man of
unflinching idealism who made no
apologies for making his convictions
clear, be they about the ethics of
journalism, the universal motives of
writing, or the golden rules for
making tea — but never more so
than in his now-legendary essay
“Politics and the English Language,”
which belongs among history’s best
advice on writing. Originally
published in 1946, Orwell’s
masterwork of clarity and
conviction is newly published in
Insurrections of the Mind: 100
Years of Politics and Culture in
America ( public library ) — an
altogether magnificent “intellectual
biography” of contemporary
thought celebrating the 100th
anniversary of The New Republic
with a selection of more than fifty
timeless, timely essays from such
formidable minds as Virginia Woolf,
Vladimir Nabokov , John Dewey,
Andrew Sullivan , and Zadie Smith.
Decades later, Orwell’s essay
endures as a spectacular guide to
writing well — an increasingly
urgent reminder that language is
first and foremost a tool of thought
which, when misused or trivialized,
does a tremendous cultural
disservice to both reader and
writer. Much like clichés poison
language through their
contagiousness, Orwell argues that
our carelessness with the written
word is propagated, in a meme-like
fashion, by our relinquishing of
deliberate thought in favor of lazy,
automatic replication. His
“catalogue of swindles and
perversions” remains a remarkable
clarion call for mindfulness in
writing.
Orwell opens with a
characteristically curmudgeonly
lament, all the timelier in our age
of alleged distaste for longform
writing:
Most people who bother with the
matter at all would admit that the
English language is in a bad way,
but it is generally assumed that we
cannot by conscious action do
anything about it. Our civilization is
decadent, and our language — so
the argument runs — must
inevitably share in the general
collapse. It follows that any struggle
against the abuse of language is a
sentimental archaism, like preferring
candles to electric light or hansom
cabs to airplanes. Underneath this
lies the half-conscious belief that
language is a natural growth and
not an instrument which we shape
for our own purposes.
Noting that the decline of language
isn’t “due simply to the bad
influence of this or that individual
writer” but, rather, has deeper
political and economic causes,
Orwell nonetheless offers the
optimistic assurance that this
downturn is reversible. Such a
turnaround, he argues, hinges on
our collective ability to uproot the
“bad habits which spread by
imitation,” an act of personal and
political responsibility for each of
us. Citing several passages as
examples of such perilous abuse of
language, he points to the two
qualities they have in common —
“staleness of imagery” and “lack of
precision” — and lists the most
prevalent of the “bad habits”
responsible for this “mixture of
vagueness and sheer incompetence”
that poisons the English language:
1. Dying metaphors: A newly invented
metaphor assists thought by evoking
a visual image, while on the other
hand a metaphor which is
technically “dead” (e.g., iron
resolution) has in effect reverted to
being an ordinary word and can
generally be used without loss of
vividness. But in between these two
classes there is a huge dump of
worn-out metaphors which have lost
all evocative power and are merely
used because they save people the
trouble of inventing phrases for
themselves. Examples are: Ring the
changes on, take up the cudgels for,
toe the line, ride roughshod over,
stand shoulder to shoulder with,
play into the hands of, no axe to
grind, grist to the mill, fishing in
troubled waters, Achilles’ heel, swan
song, hotbed. Many of these are
used without knowledge of their
meaning (what is a “rift,” for
instance?), and incompatible
metaphors are frequently mixed, a
sure sign that the writer is not
interested in what he is saying.
2. Operators, Or verbal false limbs:
These save the trouble of picking out
appropriate verbs and nouns, and at
the same time pad each sentence
with extra syllables which give it an
appearance of symmetry.
Characteristic phrases are: render
inoperative, militate against, prove
unacceptable, make contact with, be
subjected to, give rise to, give
grounds for, have the effect of, play
a leading part (role) in, make itself
felt, serve the purpose of, etc., etc.
The keynote is the elimination of
simple verbs. Instead of being a
single word, such as break, stop,
spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a
phrase, made up of a noun or
adjective tacked on to some general-
purposes verb such as prove, serve,
form, play, render. In addition, the
passive voice is wherever possible
used in preference to the active, and
noun constructions are used instead
of gerunds (by examination of
instead of by examining). The range
of verbs is further cut down by
means of the -ize and de- formations,
and banal statements are given an
appearance of profundity by means
of the not un- formation. Simple
conjunctions and prepositions are
replaced by such phrases as with
respect to, the fact that, in view of,
in the interests of, on the
hypothesis that; and the ends of
sentences are saved from anti-climax
by such refunding commonplaces as
greatly to be desired, cannot be left
out of account, a development to be
expected in the near future,
deserving of serious consideration,
brought to a satisfactory conclusion,
etc.
3. Pretentious diction: Words like
phenomenon, element, individual (as
noun), objective, categorical,
effective, virtual basic, primary,
constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize,
eliminate, liquidate, are used to
dress up simple statements and give
an air of scientific impartiality to
biased judgments. Adjectives like
epoch-making, epic, historic,
unforgettable, triumphant,
inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are
used to dignify the sordid processes
of international politics, while
writing that aims at glorifying war
usually takes on anarchaic color, its
characteristic words being: realm,
throne, chariot, trident, sword,
shield, banner, jackboot, clarion.
Foreign words and expressions such
as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus
ex machina, status quo,
gleichschaltung, Weltanschauung,
are used to give an air of culture
and elegance. Except for the useful
abbreviations i.e., e.g. and etc.,
there is no real need for any of the
hundreds of foreign phrases now
current in English. Bad writers, and
especially scientific, political and
sociological 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, clandestine, subaqueous
and hundreds of others constantly
gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon
opposite numbers. The jargon
peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena,
hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois,
lackeys, flunkey, mad dog. White
Guard, etc.) consists largely of words
and phrases translated from Russian,
German or French; but the normal
way of coining a new word is to use
a Latin or Greek root with the
appropriate affix and, where
necessary, the -ize formation. It is
often easier to make up words of this
kind (deregionalize, impermissible,
extramarital, non-fragmentatory)
than to think up the English words
that will cover one’s meaning. The
result, in general, is an increase in
slovenliness and vagueness.
4. Meaningless words: 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
even expected to do so by the
reader. When one critic writes, “The
outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work
is its living quality,” while another
writes, “The immediately striking
thing about Mr. X’s work is its
peculiar deadness,” the reader
accepts this as a simple difference of
opinion. If words like black and
white were involved, instead of the
jargon words dead and living, he
would see at once that language was
being used in an improper way.
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
meanings 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 the word if
it were tied down to any one
meaning. Words of this kind are
often used in a 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. Statements like Marshal
Pétain was a true patriot. The Soviet
Press is the freest in the world. The
Catholic Church is opposed to
persecution, are almost always made
with the intent to deceive. Others
words used in variable meanings, in
most cases more or less dishonestly,
are: class, totalitarian, science,
progressive, reactionary, bourgeois,
equality.
Many decades before our era of
listicles, formulaic BuzzWorthy
headlines, and the sort of cliché-
laden articles that result from a
factory-farming model of online
journalism, Orwell follows his
morphology of misuses with a
timely admonition:
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. The attraction of this
way of writing is that it is easy. It is
easier — even quicker, once you
have the habit.
His most salient point, however, is
a vivid testament to what modern
psychology now knows about
metaphorical thinking as conduit of
an active imagination :
By using stale metaphors, similes
and idioms, you save much mental
effort, at the cost of leaving your
meaning vague, not only for your
reader but for yourself. This is the
significance of mixed metaphors. The
sole aim of a metaphor is to call up
a visual image. When these images
dash … it can be taken as certain
that the writer is not seeing a
mental image of the objects he is
naming; in other words he is not
really thinking.
Orwell concludes with a practical
checklist of strategies for avoiding
such mindless momentum of
thought and the stale writing it
produces:
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? But you are not
obliged to go to all this trouble. You
can shirk it by simply throwing your
mind open and letting the ready
made phrases come crowding in.
They will construct your sentences
for you — even think your thoughts
for you, to certain extent — and at
need they will perform the
important service of partially
concealing your meaning even
yourself.
The remainder of Insurrections of
the Mind offers a wealth of
similarly sharp meditations on the
vibrant variety of social forces and
dynamics that we call culture.
Complement this particular excerpt
with more perennial pointers on
writing, including Zadie Smith on
the two psychologies for writing,
Vladimir Nabokov on the three
qualities of a great storyteller ,
Elmore Leonard’s ten rules of
writing, Walter Benjamin ’s
thirteen doctrines, Henry Miller’s
eleven commandments , Kurt
Vonnegut’s eight tips for writing
with style, and Susan Sontag’s
synthesized learnings.
