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.

James Murdoch at the CMS Committee Again

This further to my post for Teudsay 6th September, 'Phone Hacking Latest.'

James Murdoch gave evidence at the Culture, Media & Sport Committee again today.

During his testimony, it seemed that everything wrong that had happened at The News of the World (that it did is not in dispute, just what James knew about it & when) was somebody else's fault: either that of his subordinates, Tom Crone & Colin Myler, for concealing the extent of the phone-hacking from him; or of the Met Police, for saying they were satisfied there was nothing further to investigate (John Yates on the other hand when giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee insisted that New International was at fault for blocking his investigation - & this is a running feature in much of the testimony so far in Hackgate, everyone insisting it is someone else's fault); or of News International's lawyers, again for not informing him of the evidence they had.

James giving testimony came across to me as a fluent liar, but that is not enough, it won't do. There was a mass of evidence that phone-hacking was widespread at NotW but miraculously James saw none of it, he claimed. He kept asserting that before Summer 2011 he had no knowledge of the extent of phone-hacking - he thought it was limited to Clive Goodman - & I simply don't believe him. James gave his evidence with great confidence & aplomb, but the substance of it didn't make any sense. He seemed to be giving it in Mirrorland, where almost everything he said the opposite was actually the case. The idea that James signed off on the settlement for Gordon Taylor without requesting or seeking any further details as to why the case would inevitably be lost if it came to court, as he stated over & over again in his evidence today & in July, is incredible, in the strict sense of that word.

James is either complicit in the cover-up or incompetent/negligent. I can only presume that he prefers to be seen as the latter.

Other aspects:

It was fantastic when Tom Watson said to James: "Have you heard the term omerta - the code of silence ?"

The For Neville Email is like the Grassy Knoll in the JFK Assassination, it keeps cropping up.

A parallel between Hackgate & the Eurozone Crisis is that they have both passed the point where nothing surprises me anymore.

One link between Hackgate & Watergate is that illegal surveillance & the attempt to cover-up the fact that it had happened is at the centre of both scandals. In this regard Derek Webb, the surveillance expert used by NotW who has just emerged, reminds me rather of Gene Hackman's character in The Conversation.

Good Music & Bad Music

It has just occurred to me that a common factor among almost all my friends & acquaintances is a love of music, & taking music seriously, thinking about it, discussing it; we all love what we each consider good music, and condemn what we regard as bad music.

Now, Louis Armstrong, in terms of the reach of his influence & the consequences of his career, is one of the best & most important musicians ever, certainly in the field of popular music. (This is the case, I accept no disagreement on this one, & if you don't know why you need to do some research.) Louis said something to the effect of:

"There is no classical & jazz music, there is only good music & bad music."

Classical or jazz or any other style, music has to swing, the musicians have to mean it; and the difference between being on the money & not when it comes to music is plain, even if hard to define in words. This applies to all genres. The kind of swing is just different in each, but always there needing to be found. I'm not in any way being facetious. I'm in deadly earnest. Anyone who has heard a Baroque orchestra play with verve & bite will understand what I mean by swing in classical music. It's about all the musicians coordinating so the piece begins to take off, & the audience with it. When playing, the musicians need to be tight but loose. This is a paradox in description, but not in action.

Charles Shaar Murray, who is a superb rock critic, author of fabulous books about Jimi Hendrix (Crosstown Traffic) & John Lee Hooker (Boogie Man), came up with a very funny idea, which once you start to think about it in practice actually makes you think very hard about music & its quality - he suggested a record shop in which everything was organised into one of only two categories: Good Music & Bad Music.

Remember: It don't mean a thing - if it ain't got that swing.