Eighty years old and still the best writing advice going

In 1946, George Orwell wrote an essay called ‘Politics and the English Language’. His argument was simple: bad writing is not just an aesthetic problem. It is a thinking problem. When language becomes vague, inflated, or full of borrowed phrases, it stops conveying meaning and starts concealing it.

He was writing about political prose, but he could just as easily have been writing about marketing copy. Replace ‘the fascist jackboot’ with ‘end-to-end solutions’ and ‘delivering excellence across all touchpoints’ and you are in the same territory: language that sounds authoritative and says nothing.

Orwell ended the essay with six rules. They are eighty years old. Most business writing ignores all of them.

The six rules, and what they actually mean for your marketing

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Orwell’s point was that worn-out figures of speech have stopped doing any work. They arrive pre-assembled in your head and go straight onto the page without passing through your brain. ‘Unlocking potential.’ ‘Moving the needle.’ ‘Cutting through the noise.’ These phrases are so familiar that readers no longer register them at all. They are the written equivalent of wallpaper.

If you want a metaphor, make one. If you cannot make one, say what you mean in plain words instead.

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

This one is widely quoted and almost as widely ignored. Long words feel more important. ‘Utilise’ sounds more considered than ‘use.’ ‘Facilitate’ sounds more professional than ‘help.’ ‘Leverage’ sounds more strategic than ‘use’ again, because people have forgotten that’s what it means.

None of this is true. Long words slow reading down and make the writer sound like they are trying too hard. Short words are direct and clear. Readers trust direct and clear.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

This is the one that will save you the most time in editing, and the one that makes the biggest difference to how your writing reads. Every word you keep has to earn its place. ‘In order to’ is two words too many. ‘Due to the fact that’ is four words too many. ‘At this moment in time’ is five words you do not need.

Go through anything you have written and delete every word that is not doing something specific. What remains will be better.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

The passive voice exists primarily to help people avoid being held responsible for things. ‘Mistakes were made.’ ‘The decision was taken.’ ‘Significant investment has been committed.’ No one did any of it, apparently. It just happened.

Active voice is direct: I did this. We decided that. It is also shorter, clearer and sounds more confident. Which is exactly what you want your marketing to sound like.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Marketing has an impressive arsenal of words that mean very little to anyone outside marketing. ‘Omnichannel.’ ‘Brand equity.’ ‘Customer-centric touchpoints.’ ‘Value-add proposition.’ These phrases make the writer feel like an expert. They make the reader feel like an outsider.

If you cannot say it in plain English, there is a reasonable chance you have not quite worked out what you mean yet. Plain English is a useful test of whether you actually have something to say.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

This is the rule that stops the others from becoming a straitjacket. Sometimes a longer word is genuinely the right one. Sometimes passive voice is what the sentence needs. Sometimes jargon is appropriate because your audience uses it too and it saves you three sentences of explanation.

Orwell was not prescribing a formula. He was asking you to think about every choice you make. The test is always whether the words are doing their job, not whether they comply with a checklist.

Why does this matter for small business marketing?

The businesses I work with are typically run by people who are very good at what they do. They know their subject inside out. But when they sit down to write about it, something happens. The language changes. Suddenly they are ‘delivering tailored solutions’ and ‘working collaboratively to achieve your goals’ when in conversation they would simply say: ‘I sort it out and it works.’

The written version sounds less trustworthy than the spoken one. That is exactly the wrong way round.

Good marketing copy sounds like a knowledgeable person having a clear, direct conversation. Not like a document that has been through three rounds of committee approval. Orwell’s rules, written in 1946 to critique political propaganda, are still the shortest route to the first version.

None of this requires a marketing budget or a consultant. It just requires the discipline to read back what you have written and ask whether it actually sounds like you.