What Orwell’s Rules for Writing Can Teach Business Communicators
George Orwell was one of the 20th century’s most influential authors. Political novels like “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four” still uphold his place within the public awareness today—more than 70 years after his death—while his critiques and essays are echoed in modern political thought. Orwell’s insights are not constrained, however, to the academic, the literary, or the political. So what does Orwell have to teach the modern businessman?
Orwell was fascinated with language. He believed that careless writing would prevent communicators from articulating their true meaning in a way which would actually impact the reader. That’s an issue no less common and problematic in business than it is in politics—the topic, in turn, of his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” Fortunately for persuasive writers everywhere, Orwell also explained how to do it the right way. Here are Orwell’s rules for intelligent writing as applied to modern business communication.
1. Eliminate Clichés
A cliché is a tremendous thing. These words and phrases—metaphors, similes, and various other useful figures—became clichés precisely because they were effective, evocative, and pleasing to the ear. It is often easier to call up a whole clause, pre-assembled, than to dig out an original word, and then it will likely sound better anyhow. Think of how easy it is to write, “so as to say that,” instead of just writing what was really meant in the first place, or to write “harness,” “cultivate,” or “navigate,” instead of a word that will be more stimulating to the reader than TV static.
The obvious problem is that the clichés which once were effective, evocative, and pleasing to the ear are now only pleasing to the ear, and nothing more. They are so easy to use for the same reason that they leave no impact on the reader: they are knee-jerk and hackneyed, made numb by repetition like the din of an air-conditioner. Not even the writer ends up knowing what unique message they really meant to communicate—because the thought is not their own—and the reader leaves with nothing to remember. Metaphors and similes should arise originally from the writer’s meaning, not the other way around.
2. Keep Words Short and Few
Here is a rule that most business writers have probably heard: be concise. Nearly every clever person in history has been attributed the quote: “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle is that boiling down complex ideas into concise language takes thought, and someone who is unwilling to put in the work will always produce an undigested message, bursting with unfocused words and dressed up with yet more words to conceal the issue.
Readers have never been interested in doing the writer’s work for him, however, and never less so than today. If a blog post, ad, or email is meant to keep a reader’s attention—not to mention persuading them—every word must strike with weight and precision. All words that do not have a distinct purpose must go. Those which are long and diplomatic (“contemporary difficulties”) only for the sake of being long and impressive should be replaced by shorter ones (“today’s problems”), especially when they are more familiar to the writer and reader. The sharper the language, the deeper it will penetrate.
3. Write in the Active Voice
Passive voice refers to when the subject of a sentence does not perform the verb; it is acted upon. Note that the ‘it’ in that second clause does not act. Something else acts, and the writer can choose whether or not to say who or what. This ambiguity makes the passive voice vague and indirect while also making it irresistibly convenient. It is much more diplomatic to say, “The product was recalled,” than to say, “We recalled the product.” It is also faster to write “It is considered…” than to think about who actually considers.
The result is language which sounds correct, even academic, but which is really no different from a construction as absurd as: “…recalled the product.…considers this a standard course of action.” Nothing is said, no one takes responsibility, and the reader loses interest. The active voice—the alternative structure, in which the subject performs the verb—is practically always preferable because it gives the full thought. “This did that.” If it is too brazen or too absurd for the active voice then the solution is not to conceal it with the passive, but to write something else.
Conclusion
These rules are a simplified, restructured take on Orwell’s own, and are far from exhaustive. They are nonetheless true to the principle which is at the core of Orwell’s essay, and which business writers should take as a tenet: good writing is good thinking. Using clichés, being verbose, or writing in the passive voice is dangerous because they obscure the writer’s thoughts from himself. It is this time-intensive task of finding out what it is that he is saying which is the real job of the writer.
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