I was encouraged when I saw the testimony of Peter Hitchens – brother of atheist Christopher. He shares his testimony in a video, and also in a soon-to-be-published book, “The Rage Against Faith – How Atheism Led Me to Faith.”
This post isn’t about Peter, but is inspired by Peter. Peter is a journalist and an author, he says in the interview that when students of journalism ask him “What do I need to do to be a journalist?”, he says that “Before you do anything else, read “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell (known best for his novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four‘). He explains this essay is foundational for “writing plainly about the truth”. Curious, I downloaded a copy (PDF) from the Stanford University website.
Orwell explains the problem of modern writing, and modern writing hasn’t changed much since Orwell penned his essay:
“Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.”
Orwell’s critique isn’t of writing that is to be read for pleasure, but writing that is used to express important ideas:
“I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.”
This is an important topic to consider because as Christians, we have a message that is precious and deserves clear expression. While as clay pots we stumble and stutter and our communication will always be stilted, becoming better communicators will be to the benefit of our message.
Orwell offers help to modern writers in their written communication:
“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:
- What am I trying to say?
- What words will express it?
- What image or idiom will make it clearer?
- Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
And he will probably ask himself two more:
- Could I put it more shortly?
- Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
Finally, Orwell offers the following rules for avoiding “stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repititions, and humbug and vagueness generally”:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
