I recently came across a letter I wrote as a first year attorney. I was shocked at how poorly written it was. I used complex sentences, big words, legal jargon and, worse, flamboyant metaphors. Two years later, however, I worked under a supervisor, who was addicted to the red pen. He would intricately study sentences looking for words he could delete or places to split the sentence in half. If a sentence was longer than a line and a half, it was too long. If there were a more simplistic way of saying something, he would change it. After his editing, what was once a ten-page brief was now six. And, thanks to him, I learned to be a better writer.
Since then, colleagues, friends and family often come to me for my editing and writing skills. Usually, I oblige them, turn on track changes, and go to town. What I often find is that people forget that writing is simply a way of communication. The objective of writing is to convey a specific argument or point, not to prove how brilliant and superior you are. Using complicated, sophisticated language and long SAT vocabulary doesn’t make you appear more intellectual. It only makes your point more convoluted.
Today, I read an excellent Lexis Communities article on Orwell’s rules for clear writing, called “Inside Baseball and Orwell’s 6 Rules for Clear Writing.” In his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, Orwell, provided 6 rules for clear writing:
1) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech, which you are used to seeing in print.
2) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.
If we all adhere to these six rules, we are sure to become better writers. As the writer of “Baseball” correctly states, “If we can think and convey ideas with precision through simple words, then that’s the way to go. It’s the precision of our language, not the number of syllables, that matters.”
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