George Orwell was like many writers-he didn’t like the way other writers wrote. Writers look at the written word a bit differently from readers. Readers might like writing filled with enough grammatical errors to make English teachers reach for their rulers. Writers hate laziness in other writers.
Mark Twain hated other writers. Edgar Allen Poe complained about the writing skills of authors that have long since been forgotten.
Hemingway’s short attention span style of writing was a revelation. Yet when Hemingway was writing, William Faulkner was cranking out sentences that took up entire pages. Would Hemingway be a better blogger than Faulkner? Everyone seems to think so.
Orwell’s Tips for Better Writing.
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
I took the Blog Readability Test a few days ago and got a rating of High School. Well and good. Don’t most people prowling the web read at a High School level? I then took the more detailed Juicy Studio Readability Test, this test says I may still be talking over the heads of my readers.
Among the many ratings in the Juicy Studio’s test is the Fog Index. This measures how well people understand what you are saying. I got a Fog Index of 14.38, which puts my blog in the general area of The Wall Street Journal and leaning toward The Times and The Guardian. Hmm, maybe I am a tad long-winded.
Twenty-four percent of my words are three syllables or above. This is shocking to me-I didn’t know I knew that many words with three syllables. My blog got a Flesch Reading Ease score of 42.31. This is a bit on the low side. A good score is around 65. Good meaning easier to read. The Grade Level on the Juicy Studio test is about 9th grade, which would be the same High School score as for the other test.
Following Orwell’s advice will get a better score on these tests. Use short words. Write short sentences. Don’t put too much of a strain on the poor blog reading public.
Orwell’s Article on Politics and English Language, which is where the Six Rules come from, got a Fog Index score of 14.29. My blog got a score of 14.38. Orwell gets a Flesch Reading Ease score of 48.71 to my 42.31. His Grade level is 14.29 to my 8.98. This Readability Test has a long list of sentences that it suggests be re-written in Orwell’s article.
Orwell himself can’t pass these tests. How easy will it be for the rest of us? I have always been more along the lines of C.S.Lewis-Why use one word, when ten words will do? This is total nonsense, of course. C.S. Lewis advised using as few words as possible, just as all authors do. It’s just a cute line in the film Shadowlands. Sadly, there are more writers that follow this advice, than the six rules above.
After tweaking this post more times than I care to admit, I got it down to a Fog Index of 5.31 and up to a Flesch Reading Ease of 80.38. The test still advise changing most of the sentences. This is way too much like work.
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