I was just reading about the panic that occurred in the American Medical Association, when their journal’s deputy editor argued on a podcast that socio-economic factors were more significant in poor outcomes for non-whites than “structural racism.” As you might imagine, any kind of questioning of this orthodoxy required the defenestration of the deputy editor and the resignation of the editor-in-chief.

To reverse Orwell’s virtues: so much of it is repetition, complexity, length, passive verbs, endless jargon, barbarism. It’s a relief in a way to recall that Orwell thought things were pretty damn shitty in his day as well, but the more you read broadly across most elite media platforms these days, the more similar it all sounds. Originality, simplicity, brevity, active verbs, everyday language, decency: as simple as it is very, very hard. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Never use the passive where you can use the active. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use a long word where a short one will do. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Near the end of the essay, Orwell lists a few rules to keep writing clear, accessible and meaningful: It’s dangerous because the relationship between our words and our politics goes both ways: “ becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” We create language and language creates us. What it shows so brilliantly is how language itself is central to politics, that clarity is as hard as it is vital, and that blather is as lazy as it is dangerous. ” It remains the best guide to writing non-fiction, and it usually prompts a wave of self-loathing even more piercing than my habitual kind. People in Belgrade walk past a mural depicting British novelist George Orwell with the words 'Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” (By Oliver Bunic/AFP via Getty Images)įrom time to time, I make sure to re-read George Orwell’s classic essay, “ Politics and the English Language.

Orwell and politics