Review and revise

Writing is an effective way of getting one’s message across. It offers clear advantages over speaking. By revising our words we can insert ideas at first forgotten, reframe an argument and rectify venomous polemics. The quality of our written communications is surely dependent on this potential to change our minds.

Harry Guinness, writing in the New York Times, tells of his former teacher Timothy Kreider’s favourite phrase about revision. He calls it l’esprit d’escalier which translates as ‘the spirit of the staircase’. It describes that feeling of thinking of the perfect reply in a conversation or an argument, after the fact. Have you ever missed the opportunity to tell the navigator of an errant shopping trolley it’s not their fine motor skills you’re concerned about, or the paint chip on your car, but rather their lack of affability (insert preferred alternative)? Writing gives us a chance to relive the moment over and again before it actually happens in the reader’s mind.

This long-winded, and arguably extraneous introduction (more on this later) is by way of introducing the essay I wish to tell you about. Politics and the English Language by George Orwell is a fine prototype for the plain language movement. In it the author implores us to say that we mean, and to mean what we say. My own English teacher taught me a pertinent quote, that of Benjamin Disraeli in 1878. It was a barb at his political opponent William Gladstone, accusing him of being

…inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity…

The criticism of ego-driven oratory seems fair, but surely pompous writing is the greater of the two crimes. Orwell begins his piece with a collection of passages he claims do not suffer from the ‘mental vices’ of our ‘decadent language’ but from political and economic causes. He lays in front of us a series of faulty writing constructs borne out of laziness, pretentiousness and meaningless homage.

My point is that writing is a staged and recursive process that is improved by reviewing the original text. It is not solely an artefact of the original thoughts that inspired it. Orwell argues that by expressing ourselves clearly in writing we can free our thoughts from stagnation and revive our powers of objective analysis. It provides affordances to involve the brain and not just the larynx.

Airs and graces

Orwell is critical of using words that come from Latin and Greek to make the writer appear grand (such as extraneous). Timothy Kreider’s foreign language expression might have stirred up an accusation of giving off ‘an air of culture and elegance’ by the author. I hope in this case Orwell would be forgiving however he calls out scientific, political and sociological writers who are squarely in his crosshairs for promulgating this affectation. My last sentence is an example of what Orwell describes as ‘the tacking together of a pre-fabricated henhouse’, highlighting the use of linkages of overused prose and ‘dying metaphors’. Plain words are better than jargon he says, the use of which can sometimes be attributed to political motivations.

henhouse Henhouse

Another faux pas, or rather blunder, to which writers invariably succumb is the dreaded ‘not un-’ formation, used to make a boring statement seem important. The author writes:

It is easier– even quicker, once you have the habit– to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think.

I’m not sure why, but I’m reminded of the line from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when Arthur Dent receives a hot drink from a Nutri-matic vending machine, that tastes

almost but not quite entirely unlike tea.

I like to imagine Adams was on the same wavelength as Orwell here, in a roundabout way. The reader is offered a cure of this affliction by way of memorising the following phrase:

A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.

Turn of phrase

Instead of cobbling together the same tired phrases Orwell invites writers to think about what they want to say and then to clarify and shorten the prose to make it clear and precise as possible. Political writing is admonished for being bland and orthodox or an emotion fuelled diatribe, used largely in defence of the atrocities of war. The examples that Orwell provides such as ‘pacification’ and ‘rectification of frontiers’ seem tame by today’s standards.

The essay itself is short and can be read in under half an hour, and you might do better just to read it rather than this synopsis. However, I have endeavoured to reproduce the essence of the piece mutatis mutandis without de-emphasising the core elements.1

I will leave you with the six rules Orwell offers when in doubt about the effectiveness of one’s 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 you dislike lists then perhaps a single quotation by the author will suffice.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

  1. How many offences did you recognise in this sentence? ↩