STUDIED: Politics and the English Language, 1946
SIGNATURE: Fog as a choice. Rules that cut. Clarity as commitment.
The best legal writing manual in English was published in 1946 by a man who never practiced law.
It is eleven pages long, it is called Politics and the English Language, and its diagnosis has never been beaten: vague writing is not a failure of skill. It is a choice. “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” When a writer’s real purpose cannot survive daylight, the sentences fog on purpose, and the fog is the purpose. Orwell was writing about politics. He described every bad brief you have ever read. Nobody writes the incident occurred by mistake.
Move One: Rules That Remove Hiding Places.
Orwell closed the essay with six rules. Three of them belong taped over every lawyer’s monitor: never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word, cut it. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
The steal: these are not style advice. Each rule demolishes one specific place where a fact goes to hide. Utilize hides use. Was terminated hides fired, and hides who did the firing.
Move Two: Read for the Fog.
The essay teaches reading as much as writing. When prose suddenly goes abstract, somebody is hiding something, and the location of the fog marks the location of the fear.
The steal: take the other side’s brief and find its vaguest paragraph. That paragraph is sitting on the fact they cannot say plainly. Aim there.
Move Three: Clarity Is Commitment.
Here is why fog feels safe: a clear sentence can be proven wrong. Writing plainly means betting your signature on every line, and most writers will not make the bet.
The steal: make it. Judges learn fast whose sentences can be checked and whose cannot, and they extend credit accordingly.
A Warning from the Author.
Orwell’s own sixth rule takes the knife away before it cuts you: break any of the rules sooner than write something barbarous. The rules serve the sentence. A lawyer who follows rules off a cliff has missed the essay’s entire point, which is that nothing, including a rule, excuses you from thinking.
The Drill.
One page of your latest brief. Apply the cutting rule to every sentence: any word that can go, goes. If you did not lose a tenth of the page, go back. You were not trying.
