Before Big Brother
During the past 18 months or so, one of the biggest demands on my time has been trying to keep up with all the recommended readings - both textbooks and published papers. However, there is one paper that I have returned to several times as I found it quite fascinating, from the first time I read it over a year ago. This is a short paper by George Orwell, entitled Politics and the English language published in 1946 [1], the year after Animal Farm [2], and three years before his most famous novel, 1984 [3].
In the paper, Orwell criticizes the increasing inclination of writers to write in as confusing a manner as possible, to 'obfuscate the truth' so that not only do readers not fully understand what the writer is discussing, it's almost a deliberate attempt by writers to appear more clever than they actually are. In the examples given in the paper, the writers seemed almost to vie with each other as to who could write the most convoluted, unintelligible, pseudo-academic article as possible.
To combat this growing trend, Orwell highlighted the need for the removal of dying metaphors, phrasal verbs, pretentious diction, and meaningless words from the English language in order to improve the clarity of writing. These basic guidelines seem like common-sense advice to us nowadays but in the 1940s, they were the opposite of how most academics wrote in those days.
What is most extraordinary about this paper is that it pre-dated the Plain Language movement which started in the USA, in the decade after World War II. Many of the suggestions that Orwell made were applied in guidelines by the Plain Language movement as it gained momentum among the fledgling field of technical writers emerging in the post-war era of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
In an attempt to remove any confusion from the writing process, Orwell recommended that writers ask themselves four basic questions:
"Nobody wants to read what you write and [in technical communication], they will
read as little of what you write as they possibly can." ~ Elizabeth Tebeaux
References
In the paper, Orwell criticizes the increasing inclination of writers to write in as confusing a manner as possible, to 'obfuscate the truth' so that not only do readers not fully understand what the writer is discussing, it's almost a deliberate attempt by writers to appear more clever than they actually are. In the examples given in the paper, the writers seemed almost to vie with each other as to who could write the most convoluted, unintelligible, pseudo-academic article as possible.
To combat this growing trend, Orwell highlighted the need for the removal of dying metaphors, phrasal verbs, pretentious diction, and meaningless words from the English language in order to improve the clarity of writing. These basic guidelines seem like common-sense advice to us nowadays but in the 1940s, they were the opposite of how most academics wrote in those days.
In an attempt to remove any confusion from the writing process, Orwell recommended that writers ask themselves four basic questions:
- What am I trying to say?
- What words will express it?
- What image will make it clearer?
- Could I put it more succinctly?
While many of the techniques in the field of information development may have changed over the intervening decades - 75 years on, these are still valid questions for any technical writer to ask themselves when planning a document. These basic guidelines are also ones that I have tried to incorporate into my own approach when writing, even though I am the first to admit that I don't always succeed in doing so.
___________________________________________________________________________________"Nobody wants to read what you write and [in technical communication], they will
read as little of what you write as they possibly can." ~ Elizabeth Tebeaux
References
[1] Orwell, G. (1946) Politics and the English language, Horizon: A review of literature and art, vol. 13, issue 76,
pp.252–265, GB, London.
[2] Orwell, G. (1945) Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, London: Secker and Warburg.
[3] Orwell, G. (1949) 1984, London: Secker and Warburg.
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