5 Guidelines for English Prose Style

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."

- George Orwell, Politics & the English Language, in Inside The Whale & Other Essays, p.154


Here are 5 guidelines for English prose style:


1. Make sure your choice of words and syntax accurately reflect your meaning. This is easily said, but it is basic, and a large part of the whole craft of writing clearly lies in understanding and applying this rule.


2. Spell properly. The dictionary is your invaluable companion in this and in Rule 1.


3. In general, avoid cliche, except for the purposes of satire.


4. Write in the style appropriate to your subject. For example, to get tremendously worked up over something trivial is absurd. This is a common fault of newspaper columnists, who, with honourable exceptions, are often short of meaningful material to write about.


Which leads to Rule 5:


5. Don't write unless you genuinely have something to say. What follows may sound like a high claim, but writing is a Magical art, and it is abusing that Art to engage in it when you don't really have something to say. It is trading with the Lower Powers, & no good will come of it.


Further reading:


Orwell's Politics & the English Language, where the epigraph comes from, is fundamental to this topic.