Okay, so AnlamK has asked me to read a Language Log criticism of Orwell’s _Politics and the English Language_titled “Orwell’s Liar” and respond. After doing a search of my own blog, I realized I had gotten into some of the same arguments with a different Language Log writer four months ago. When I first sat down to type this post, I even gave it the same title as my old reply.
So everyone who hasn’t re-read my old post, read it, and then I’ll throw in a few extra thoughts:
Yeah, once again, Orwell breaks his own rules, and the result often isn’t pretty: “it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.” Why “by conscious action”? As opposed to what, an unconscious action? Good example of why unnecessary words need to be cut.
The passive voice in Orwell’s opening is also annoying and, especially, vague: who says these things? Pre-Google, “who says” questions can be frustratingly hard to answer; when I first saw the latest Language Log post, I knew I had read similar things but couldn’t remember where. But I’m glad I didn’t have to make a vague comparison between the latest Language Log and some unspecified similar post, and it’s unfortunate that Orwell had to do the equivalent.
Similarly, long words and short words: yes, they sometimes differ subtly in meaning, but often, people have no clear idea of what the difference might be, or what the longer word even means. What’s the difference between “scrupulous” and “careful” in the quote from Orwell? The Language Logger doesn’t say, and if he doesn’t know, then I’d agree that Orwell should have opted for “careful” here. (Though LLer is confused about whether the problem is only that words differ in meaning, or whether you can use long words for the hell of it).
My only other comment is that the style of “Orwell’s Liar” is comically bad, a good example of what Orwell targeted: “further milquetoast simulacra of one or the other,” “time honored Language Log style,” “a lack of imagination that would be worthy of someone who lacked imagination,” “Verily shall I yawn unto you Orwell’s unoriginal original,” “they cry out for him to be hoisted by his own pedantry and held up to public ridicule”: are these phrases meant as jokes? They look like it, except I don’t see the point of parodying bad writing in a defense of alleged features of bad writing.
Thanks!
Once again I think you are missing the point of the post which is that if you ALWAYS follow Orwell’s rules then your writing would be worse than if you just tried to be sensible and write clearly. I don’t think that anyone at LL would have a problem with the rule “Follow Orwell’s rules when they make your writing better, but don’t when they make your writing worse”.
The folks at LL like to get worked up over people treating these sorts of rules as gospel. Using the passive voice is NOT “bad” writing. Orwell uses the passive voice. Style manuals use the passive voice sometimes *while telling you to avoid doing so* (and not deliberately).
The bottom line is that sometimes the passive voice is clearer, sometimes extra words add rhythm or style or humour or extra meaning, “cliched” similies and metaphors can be useful, long words can be useful when they convey a subtly different meaning to short words and technical language is perfectly acceptable for certain audiences.
These things that Orwell complains about are not features of “bad writing” they simply happen to be things can easily be done poorly.
Writing something in the passive tense when it would be better in the active tense may be ‘poor writing’ but it’s not any worse than writing something in the active tense when it would have been better in the passive tense! And so on for the rest of Orwell’s “rules”.
Look, I don’t have any problem with using Orwell’s rules as general guidelines of things to think about when writing. The passive voice *can* be unclear (and the active voice can be clumsy), adding words for the sake of words is silly, overused metaphors become tedious and meaningless, using long (or foreign) words for the sake of makes you sound pretentious… but honestly? Doing anything for the sake of it is going to make you sound silly and using the wrong words, phrases or tense is going to make things unclear.