Politics and the English Language

According to Orwell, the following habits pollute prose writing in English:

1) Dying Metaphors
2) Operators, or verbal false limbs
3) Pretentious diction
4) Meaningless words
---"Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality...are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so but the reader" (109).

Furthermore, Orwell writes that "The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness" (111) and that political language "has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness...Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them" (115)".

For serious writers looking to write clearly, concretely, and concisely, Orwell suggests to ask the following questions before writing:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
5. Could I put it more shortly?

And, most importantly:

6. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? (113)


Once again, Orwell proves he is ahead of his time!

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From Why I Write