Orwell ended his 1946 essay 'Politics and the English Language' with six rules a writer could follow to keep prose clear. They're short, they're blunt, and the last one quietly undoes the first five. Here's the full list and what each one is really aiming at.
The Six Rules
Orwell built the rules around a single complaint. He thought modern prose had gone soft, stuffed with dead metaphors and ready-made phrases that let people write without thinking. The fix was a checklist a writer could run in their head.
- Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Stale imagery is a sign you've stopped picturing what you mean.
- 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.
Why the Sixth Rule Matters Most
The trap with rule lists is that people start obeying them past the point of sense. Orwell saw that coming. Rule six gives you permission to ignore the other five whenever following them would produce something ugly or clumsy. He wasn't selling a formula. He was warning that you can write 'barbarous' prose while keeping every guideline intact, and that good ears matter more than obedience.
Good prose is like a windowpane.
George Orwell, Why I Write (1946)
That image runs underneath all six rules. The goal isn't clever writing. It's writing you can see straight through to the thing being said. For the wider picture of how he worked, see the full George Orwell writing routine.
What You Can Steal
- Run the cut test on every draft. If a word can go, it goes.
- Default to the active voice and short words. Reach for the long version only when it's genuinely better.
- Kill any phrase you've seen a hundred times. Familiar images are usually dead ones.
- Trust your ear over the rulebook. A rule that makes the sentence worse isn't worth keeping.