George Orwell Quotes

It's so easy to use tired, shopworn figures of speech. I love using long, fancy words but have learned - mostly from writing my biography of Winston Churchill - that short, strong words work better. I am ever-vigilant against the passive and against jargon, both of which are so insidious.

And how is clarity to be achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them.

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

I'm not an angry person. When I write, the lawyer in me tries to make it as easy to read as possible.

Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.

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

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

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

When I write legally, I try to write very plain, very vanilla, very clear.

There are writers who pour out words, concepts that sound really important but that basically say nothing. I always tried to be as concise as possible, all to try and reach everyone, but especially the simple people, those who needed to be reached more than anyone else.

He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do: and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.

Why say 'utilize' when you can say 'use'?

Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.

To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.

Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp.

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else.

An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.

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.

Use familiar words-words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away.

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

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 what's really hard is making sense and making what you write clear and smooth-flowing.

[Presently, science undergraduates] do not learn to write clearly and briefly, marshalling their points in due and aesthetically satisfying order, and eliminating inessentials. They are inept at those turns of phrase or happy analogy which throw a flying bridge across a chasm of misunderstanding and make contact between mind and mind.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.