Politics and the English Language

Rules to write by:

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 outright barbarous.

For more on the steady decay of written English, please refer to the text linked to here.

PS - My favorite line of the text:

"Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones..."