More than 65 years later, Judge Richard A. The diagnosis and rules still reverberate among professional writers. Orwell’s 12-page essay diagnosed what he called the “decay of language,” and it offered six curative rules. “Debased” prose was marked by “abuse,” “slovenliness,” and a “lifeless, imitative style” that was nearly devoid of “a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech.” A “tendency … away from concreteness” had left writing “dreary,” “ugly and inaccurate.” “agueness and sheer incompetence,” he said, “is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose.” 4
“he English language is in a bad way,” he warned. Orwell’s most exhaustive commentary about writing was his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, 3 which minced no words.
It was a lifelong passion, 1 fueled (as Christopher Hitchins recently described) by Orwell’s “near visceral feeling for the English language.” 2 Somewhat less known is his abiding passion about the craft of writing. Like other Americans, lawyers and judges most remember British novelist and essayist George Orwell (1903-1950) for his two signature books, Animal Farm and 1984.
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