I try and remember his guidelines for writing, particularly when I'm writing about politics or culture. I don't always succeed but I keep trying. Orwell detested pretentious writing and verbal profligacy. He had nothing but disdain for faux academic or pseudo intellectual anything. He also railed against euphemisms: Collateral damage would have sent him into a rage.
He wrote a great article on political prose. Here's something I love from the article, though it's not overtly about politics. It is, however, about plain writing:
"Here is a well-known verse 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 favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is 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."
Read the article here:
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_politHere are Orwell's 12 tips for writing:
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?
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. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
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.
* From “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell.
In addition to admiring Orwell, I have a similar emotion toward the language of E.M. Forester, who also wrote brilliant political essays. If you ever get the chance, read his "Two Cheers For Democracy". His language is as clean as can be imagined, and he's startlingly prescient.
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