George Orwell's Six Rules for Writing in Plain English, 1Q84, & The Elements of Style

I got my copy of Haruki Murakami's English translation of 1Q84 today. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that Amazon made me quite unhappy this morning given the condition of said book. I've already taken steps to get a replacement copy, but in the meantime I've decided I'm going to read as much as I can before the time limit to return it expires (30 days).

Inevitably thoughts turned to George Orwell.  1 Q (which is the way to pronounce the number nine in Japanese) 84 might seem the reason why, but it's actually moreso because E.B. White and William Strunk Jr. cite Orwell in The Elements of Style (II. Elementary Principles of Compostion #12 Use definite, specific, concrete language).

"To show what happens when strong writing is deprived of its vigor, George Orwell once took a passage from the Bible and drained it of its blood..."

Below is Orwell's translation followed by the verse from Ecclesiastes  (likely from the King James' version of the Bible).

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitve activities exhbits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must inevitably be taken into account.

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, not yet riches to men of understanding, not yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happenth to them all.

The citation is taken from Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" published in Horizon in April 1946 criticizing contemporary English.

In the essay Orwell advocates the use of Plain English and devised six rules to guide writers, that:

"...cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases"

The rules are:

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 outright barbarous.

Now I don't want to stop talking about Orwell, at least not at the moment because let's face it my posts today have been not the most inspirational.

That being said, Monsieur Redacteur and I don't always see eye to eye on the writers we love. I don't like Hemingway much when it's all said and done. I think Joyce is boring. I brought "Ulysses" and "The Sun Also Rises" with me on vacation once and as boring as I found Las Vegas it was still more interesting to me than either of those books.

But we agree on Orwell. We've both read 1984 a couple dozen times. Once I was so inspired having re-read Animal Farm that I didn't realise all the writing I did was Animal Farm with vegetables.

Orwell's essay, "Why I Write" is one of themost inspiring things I've ever read on the reasons why "we" write. The first time I read it, I cried. Only one other piece of this personal nature written by a writer I greatly admire has ever had such an effect on me* heart, mind, body, and soul, but nothing moves me as much as these words Orwell wrote:

"...After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class..."

I'm 30-cough-something and as the clock tick-tick-ticks away there is more external pressure being forced upon me to have as a Rastafarian I met the other day advised me,"four or five babies". I'm not a moron, I sense the changes in my body, but children are a lot of work, and I'd rather write books than have babies. (Insert birthing literature joke here.)

Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

I see what I want to see in Orwell's words above, but I'm also honest. That's why I made sure to cut and paste the bit in it's - uncensored for my own personal comfort zone - entirety. I won't go as far as to point a finger at my motives for wanting to be a writer, but I'll own up to my healthy vanity and my love of all things me, me, me.

I'll even go so far as to tell you a reason of my own.

When I was four I decided that words were the only way for me to make people understand that because I had a magical power to screw up my eyes and look at the world out of focus that I was in great danger. It was a great burden to possess such a frightening power in case I was kidnapped by street pirates (who had boats that looked like cars) who would force me to use my magical power for evil - that I should find a way to explain it to a few people I trusted (my grandparents) in case I ever went missing and as my sidekicks they'd have to understand how to help me turn off my power if such a thing ever happened.

Then one day there was a terrible storm and after the storm cleared and the sun came out there were all these poor earthworms dying in our garden. I tried to use my magical power to save them, but it was no use. All I could think to do was grab a metal bucket, fill it with drier dirt, and airlift the ones still alive and wriggling in the muddy puddles with my fingers. It grossed me out, but I worked as fast as I could. The sun's hot light shined down on a graveyard. I dumped my dirt bucket full of earthworms on a dry patch of grass under the roof of the house and cried my heart out over those I couldn't save.

I scratched into the damp earth squiggles. Lines that looked much like the almost fossilised earthworms themselves, but in my mind I was telling a legend of the great struggle against the sun that oppressed them and of a hero that was sent from the gods to carry them to safety. It was a legend that the earthworms would tell to their children and would never be forgotten.

I still remember this legend though I'm sure the earthworms have forgotten it. It would be another couple of years before I'd learn that earthworms have two hearts but no brains...

I write because deep down I believe it's my magical power (procrastination, television, movies, blogging, and nearly everything else being my Kryptonite).

And if you understand that it's not just my ego that makes me believe that, then maybe writing is your magical power too.