Writing & Expression: Masters · OrwellSix Rules · The Translation · Honesty & Political Language · Like a Window Pane

Orwell ended "Politics and the English Language" with six rules, almost all of them "nevers." They aren't elegant or deep, but they are subtraction you can run on the spot: for every sentence, ask each in turn, then cut the needless word, the passive, the long word, the cliché.

The spirit of the six is a distrust of the ornate. Orwell saw that bad writing comes not from a poor vocabulary but from too many ready-made phrases — prefab slabs the writer stacks without thinking, while the meaning evaporates in the stacking. The rules force a pause: every long word, every passive, every cliché must justify itself or be cut. They demote "writing well" from a question of talent to a checking move anyone can practice. Note rule six — it admits the rules have limits. Break one sooner than write something stiff. Rules are servants, not masters.

• ✓ Any writing that needs clarity: memos, email, docs, announcements — especially the line-by-line cut after a draft is done
• ✓ Turn the six into a checklist and run it mechanically when revising
• ✗ Pitfall: treating the rules as dogma and forgetting rule six — writing something awkward just to avoid a passive
• ✗ Pitfall: cutting only at the word level, never at the level of thought — the sentence gets clean but still says nothing clearly

Orwell ran a famous experiment: he translated a beautiful passage of the Bible into "modern English of the worst sort." It is a rewrite run in reverse — deliberately making a good sentence bad, so you watch abstract nouns, passives, and jargon drain the blood step by step, leaving a grammatically correct corpse.

The original is all concrete pictures: running, battle, bread, time and chance. Orwell's "modern" version swaps them for objective considerations, competitive activities, innate capacity — abstract nouns replacing images, passives and Latin roots replacing short Anglo-Saxon words. The two "mean the same," yet one you can see and remember, while the other leaves your mind blank. That's his core claim: abstraction isn't sophistication, it's evasion. When you can't be specific, it's usually because you haven't thought it through — or don't want it seen clearly. Concrete nouns and verbs are a by-product of honesty.

• ✓ Status updates, post-mortems, board reports, fundraising decks — anywhere you're tempted to dress up bad news in big words
• ✓ Self-check: interrogate every abstract noun — "what specifically? who? how much?"
• ✗ Pitfall: thinking jargon and long words look professional — more often they look like hiding
• ✗ Pitfall: filling sentences with "leverage / synergy / circle back" you can't even define yourself

Orwell traced the language problem back to a moral one: vagueness isn't poor style, it's an unwillingness to tell the truth. Euphemism exists to make the unacceptable sound acceptable — and clear writing requires, first, that you actually want to be understood.

Orwell wrote that "the great enemy of clear language is insincerity." When there's a gap between what a person thinks and what they say, they reach instinctively for long words and ready-made phrases, like a cuttlefish squirting ink. "Layoffs" become "right-sizing"; "a fire sale" becomes "value optimization"; "we screwed up" becomes "we fell short of expectations." More dangerous still is the reverse loop: vague language doesn't just reflect vague thought, it manufactures it — use "optimize" long enough and you stop feeling that you're firing living people. Language and thought feed each other. So writing clearly is, first, forcing yourself to think clearly and face the truth.

• ✓ Bad news, accountability, apologies, reorgs — the more you want to dodge, the more you should measure it against Orwell's ruler
• ✓ Self-check: in this sentence, am I using words to shield myself from a bullet?
• ✗ Pitfall: mistaking euphemism for tact — most readers see through it, and what's left is distrust
• ✗ Pitfall: confusing "honest" with "harsh" — honesty can be gentle, but never so vague it misleads on the facts

In "Why I Write," Orwell gave good prose a metaphor: a window pane. The reader sees the meaning through it and shouldn't notice the glass at all. The highest craft of writing is to make the craft invisible — the reader feels clarity, not your cleverness.

This looks like the opposite of Lu Xun's "break the rule for effect," but it's wisdom from the other pole. Orwell isn't against style — he's against style that gets in the way. Ornate adjectives, deliberate inversions, sentences that exist only to look smart: they're smudges on the glass that stop the reader's eye on the words instead of letting it pass through to the meaning. A good pane isn't the absence of craft — quite the reverse: transparency is the hardest craft of all. This matters doubly for engineers and leaders: your docs, memos, and email aren't there to make people admire your prose, but to make them understand you effortlessly. When the reader finishes remembering your argument and forgetting your sentences, you've won.

• ✓ Almost all professional writing: you're conveying information and judgment, not performing prose
• ✓ The test: after reading, does the reader remember your argument or your sentences?
• ✗ Pitfall: mistaking "transparent" for "bland" — transparency is hard; it's what remains after every flourish is cut
• ✗ Pitfall: grinding even the places that need a voice (personal brand, speeches) into colorless glass, losing all character