Politics and the English language.

Orwell’s rules for writing have outlived almost everything else he argued — outlived the reportage, the reviews, very nearly the novels — partly because they are short enough to be obeyed without ever being read. Six rules, half a page, endlessly reprinted. The reprinting has not made us write better. It may even have made the rules harder to see.

The rules themselves are sound and famously brisk: prefer the short word, cut whatever can be cut, never reach for a stale image, never use the passive where the active will serve. A writer could do considerably worse. But five of the six are about tidiness — and tidiness, Orwell knew perfectly well, was never the real subject.

The sixth rule

It is the sixth that matters, and the sixth that goes first: break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous ¹ 1The rule is endlessly quoted; it is far less often obeyed — perhaps because obeying it means admitting that the first five were only ever instruments. . The sixth rule overrules the other five. It says, in effect, that clean prose is not the goal but the instrument — and that an instrument can be picked up by anyone, for anything.

Orwell’s actual claim — the one the half-page of rules quietly carries — is that slack language and dishonest thought feed each other in a loop. Vague writing lets you avoid noticing what you mean; once you have stopped noticing, vague thinking turns comfortable; and comfortable vague thinking is exactly what bad politics asks of the people it depends on. The rules are not etiquette. They are a way of staying honest enough to be difficult to recruit.

A small disagreement

So the disagreement I want to register is modest, and it is with the admirers rather than with Orwell. To treat the essay as a style guide is to keep the five rules and lose the sixth — to polish the prose and forget what the polishing was ever for.

Clear writing was never the point. Clear writing is what honesty looks like once it has reached the page.