George Orwell Quotes

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which 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 voice 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.

It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language.

True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself.

I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose.

I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.

I think people talk too much; that's the truth of the matter. I do. I don't believe in words. People use too many words and usually wrongly. I am sure that in the distant future people will talk much less and in a more essential way. If people talk a lot less, they will be happier. Don't ask me why.

Short, sweet, and to the point. Clear writing, and therefore clear commands, comes from clear thinking. Think simple.

The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication.

Don't use big words. They mean so little.

He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.

I'm trying to tell the story in the most clear, concise, and truthful way, taking those everyday words and phrases and capturing them in a way that they become something else.

You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.

Empty your knapsack of all adjectives, adverbs and clauses that slo your stride and weaken your pace. Travel light. Remember the most memorable sentences in the English language are also the shortest: "The King is dead" and "Jesus wept."

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

I think in most cases, unless you're writing about a character who is garrulous, you say what you've got to say and then get out. Those little conjunctions, those little turnaround words help you do it. That's the way I like to write: I get rid of things rather than add them.

It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code... obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

Whatever sentence will bear to be read twice, we may be sure was thought twice.

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing — to be clear.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.