Orwell's six rules for writing are the last page of "Politics and the English Language", an essay first published in the magazine Horizon in April 1946. They ask you to avoid stale figures of speech, prefer short words, cut what you can, prefer the active voice, use everyday words, and break any rule before writing something barbarous. Our view, stated plainly: the rules are sound defaults for an essay and wrong as laws, because academic writing needs technical terms, some passives and cautious words that the rules would cut.
EdCitation publishes this guide. We read the essay in the Orwell Foundation's text (Orwell, 1946), dated its first appearance from that text and from the Orwell Society (Hurst, 2026), and read the linguists who have attacked the rules. The before-and-after examples are ours.
EdCitation never writes any part of anyone's work, and we are proud of that line: your sentences stay yours. It checks what a rule can check. Check your paper reads your brief's word limit into a free checklist, and Mechanics QA checks the finished file for the formatting and language slips a spell-checker lets through.
What are Orwell's six rules for writing?
Orwell offered six rules to rely on when instinct fails, numbered i to vi. In our words:
- Do not use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech you are used to seeing in print.
- "Never use a long word where a short one will do" (Orwell, 1946).
- If a word can be cut, cut it.
- Do not use the passive where the active will do.
- Do not use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if an everyday English equivalent exists.
- Break any of the rules above rather than write something barbarous.
Orwell admits that the rules sound elementary, and that a writer could keep them all and still write badly. They were meant for language as a tool of thought, not for literature.
What is "Politics and the English Language" about? A summary
The essay argues that sloppy language and sloppy thinking feed each other, and that writers who notice their habits can break the cycle.
The argument, part by part
Orwell opens with five passages of published prose, by two professors, a psychology essay, a Communist pamphlet and a letter to Tribune, and finds two faults in all of them: stale images and a lack of precision. A catalogue of the tricks behind them follows: dying metaphors; "operators" such as militate against and exhibit a tendency to, which replace a simple verb; pretentious diction; and words, such as democracy, used with no fixed meaning.
The essay then turns to politics: political writing defends what cannot be defended, Orwell argues, and so needs euphemism, as when a bombing raid is called pacification. Before the rules come four questions a careful writer asks of every sentence (what am I trying to say, which words say it, which image makes it clearer, and is the image fresh), and two more: could it be shorter, and is anything avoidably ugly (Orwell, 1946).
Where and when it first appeared
The Orwell Foundation's text ends with its source line, Horizon, April 1946 (Orwell, 1946). Hurst (2026), reviewing a Bodleian Library reprint for the Orwell Society, says that within weeks the essay was printed as a pamphlet for the staff of British newspapers, then abridged and reprinted in Britain and published in the United States.
Orwell's rules in academic writing: when to keep and when to break each one
Keep each rule as the default; break it when accuracy, your discipline or your brief demands. The table is our reading.
| Rule | What it asks | When to break it in academic writing | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| i. Fresh figures only | Drop metaphors you have seen in print | A dead metaphor that is now a plain term (bottleneck, peer review) | Orwell (1946) |
| ii. Short words | The short word, if it will do | When the long word is more exact: careful is not scrupulous | Beaver (2009) |
| iii. Cut words | Cut every word that can go | Keep the hedges (may, suggest) and signposts the argument needs | Our view |
| iv. Active voice | The active wherever it works | In a method, where the procedure matters more than who did it | Pullum (2011) |
| v. Everyday words | No foreign, scientific or jargon word with a plain equivalent | A technical term with no everyday equivalent; et al. in citations | Orwell (1946) |
| vi. Break the rules | Any rule gives way before barbarous prose | Always open: the other five are defaults | Orwell (1946) |
| Your word limit | Not Orwell's, but it is where most cutting starts | Never: the brief's limit binds | Check your paper reads it |
What does each rule mean for an essay?
Each rule targets a habit that still turns up in student prose.
Rules i and ii: stale images and long words
Orwell separates fresh metaphors, which help thought, from dead ones such as iron resolution, which have become ordinary words and are fine, and from the large dump of worn-out ones in between. Our candidates for that dump in essays today: shed light on, pave the way, a double-edged sword.
For rule ii, the essay runs its own test. It turns a verse of Ecclesiastes into modern officialese and counts: the original has 49 words and 60 syllables, the parody 38 words and 90 syllables, and says less (Orwell, 1946). Orwell adds that the rule does not always mean the Anglo-Saxon word over the Latin one; it means the fewest and shortest words that cover the meaning. Which formal words earn their place is in our guide to academic vocabulary.
Rules iii and iv: cutting and the active voice
Cutting starts with openings that announce a point instead of making it; Orwell's example is a long stock phrase that means only I think. The active voice usually helps too, because it names who did what: "we interviewed 12 nurses" beats "12 nurses were interviewed by the researchers".
Rules v and vi: plain words, and the way out
Rule v targets words chosen to sound learned. Orwell's list of pretentious diction includes phenomenon, element, individual, objective, primary and utilize, and the essay says bad writers, especially scientific, political and sociological ones, think Latin and Greek words grander than Saxon ones. Rule vi is the escape clause: the first five were never meant to be kept at the cost of sense.
Where do Orwell's rules clash with academic conventions?
In four places: technical terms, the passive in methods, cautious language and Latin abbreviations. In each, your discipline's convention wins.
Technical terms
Some words Orwell disliked are now technical terms. Predict has an exact sense in a results section, yet the essay lists it among unnecessary Latin words. Rule v itself allows for this, since it applies only when an everyday equivalent exists, and there is none for regression or statistically significant. Use your field's term, define it once, and use it consistently.
The passive in a methods section
A method is where the passive most often belongs, because the procedure matters and the person usually does not: "the samples were stored at 4 °C" (ours). Pullum (2011) argues that the passive is a useful construction every good writer uses, and that it can put the doer in the spotlight rather than hide it. What APA 7 and universities say about "I" and the passive is in our guide to academic tone, and the parts of a method in how to write a methodology chapter.
Hedges and signposts
Rule iii would cut may, appears to and suggests, yet those words make a claim match its evidence. Keep them, as hedging and cautious language explains, with the linking words in signposting.
Latin abbreviations
Orwell spares i.e., e.g. and etc. and wants other foreign phrases gone. Citation styles add et al., which no everyday phrase replaces; our guide to Latin abbreviations shows how each style sets them.
What do linguists say is wrong with Orwell's rules?
The sharpest critics are linguists writing on Language Log. Their case: the rules are vague, Orwell broke them, and the ban on the passive misunderstands the passive.
Pullum: the passive rule and the essay's own passives
Pullum (2006) wrote of despising the essay, and welcomed the critic Stanley Fish's verdict in the New York Times Book Review that it is overrated. The post reports that Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage found the essay a little over 20% passive, against a highest rate of 13% in three studies of periodicals; we did not read the dictionary itself. Pullum's own later count is in our prose guide for clear writing. Pullum (2011) later concluded that most writing advice about the passive is mistaken.
Where the ban on the passive came from
The same post records a discussion among Language Log's writers (Pullum, 2006). Geoffrey Nunberg credited Orwell with the modern fixation, but thought Orwell objected to the passive mainly as wordy, not as a way of dodging responsibility. Arnold Zwicky replied that the advice was already common in American college handbooks of the 1930s and 1940s. Mark Liberman noted that one scientific society's instructions for abstracts asked for the passive instead of "I" and "we". We report these as the post records them; we did not check the handbooks or the instructions.
Beaver: vague rules that Orwell broke
Beaver (2009) calls the essay beautifully written but faults each rule. Its first sentence uses a passive where an active would be a word shorter, and its second uses collapse as a figure of speech. Rule ii, Beaver argues, is really about meaning, not length: careful would not quite do for scrupulous. The fault is the imprecise word, whatever its length, which is close to Orwell's own advice to let the meaning choose the word.
Where we stand
In our view the critics are right about rule iv, and Orwell is right about the habits: stock phrases, padding and words picked to impress.
Orwell's rules in practice: a before-and-after paragraph
The paragraph is ours, invented for this guide from phrases on Orwell's own lists, and states no real finding.
Before (ours, 55 words)
It is not an unjustifiable assumption that the utilisation of mobile telephones within the classroom environment exhibits a tendency to militate against the attentional capacities of learners, and this is a phenomenon which cannot be left out of account by educational decision-makers going forward, since it constitutes something of an Achilles' heel for contemporary pedagogy.
After (ours, 22 words)
Mobile phones in the classroom may reduce pupils' attention [citation needed]. School leaders should weigh this risk when they set phone policies.
Most of the before version comes from Orwell's own lists, from not unjustifiable assumption to Achilles' heel, and all of it went. The after version keeps may, breaking rule iii on purpose, because no source here shows the effect; the placeholder marks where one must go.
A method sentence where the passive stays (ours)
Before: The administration of the questionnaire to all participants was carried out in person. After: The questionnaire was administered in person. The operator and the noun went; the passive stayed, because the reader needs the procedure.
How to apply Orwell's rules to your own draft
Run the rules as one revising pass once the argument is settled:
- Read the brief first. Check your paper, free, lists the word limit and style rules, each beside its sentence.
- Circle stock images. Replace any you have read many times, or drop the image and say the thing.
- Find the operators. Carry out, give rise to, have the effect of: try the single verb.
- Test each long word. Keep it if it is your field's term or more exact.
- Cut the padding, not the hedges.
- Check each passive. Keep it where the action matters more than the actor; rewrite it where it hides who did what.
- Check the finished file. Mechanics QA checks formatting, citations, figures and language slips; Verify references, free, checks the list.
How EdCitation helps with a plain, correct paper
EdCitation is the best companion we know for this revision: it checks what rules can check and never writes, rewrites or edits a sentence of your paper.
Mechanics QA: the slips a spell-checker lets through
Mechanics QA, part of Pro at $8 a month, reads the whole file rule by rule: formatting against the APA 7 student paper; comments, tracked changes and template text left in; each citation matched to the list and each reference looked up in the publisher's record; figures that disagree; and language slips a spell-checker misses. No model reads your paper, and every finding names its rule and its fix. It will not judge whether a word is too long or an image too worn: that is Orwell's work, and yours. A free account gets three checks a month; see pricing.
Check your paper: the limit you are cutting to
On 27 September 2026 we gave Check your paper a brief we wrote for a methods commentary. It returned nine rules, each beside its sentence, among them at most 1,300 words excluding references, APA 7, and 1-inch margins (our 2.54 cm, converted). It set two sentences aside as things no rule can test: our request for plain, concise English, and our permission to use the passive for procedures. Those two are yours to judge.
Cite a source, Find sources and Verify references
Given the Orwell Foundation's address, Cite a source read the title and site but no author, and dated the entry 16 February 2011, the page's own date. Add George Orwell as author, and the essay's first year, 1946, before building the entry in APA 7 or another style. Find sources, free, searched "Orwell Politics and the English Language plain style": 1,603 results, with George Y. Trail's 1995 College English article on teaching the essay's rhetoric third. Verify references returned all five of this guide's sources verified.
Quick questions
What are Orwell's six rules for writing?
Avoid stale figures of speech, prefer short words, cut what you can, prefer the active, use everyday words, and break any rule rather than write something barbarous.
Where did "Politics and the English Language" first appear?
In the magazine Horizon, in April 1946. The Orwell Society reports it was soon printed as a pamphlet for British newspaper staff.
Should I follow Orwell's rules in academic writing?
As defaults, yes. Break them for technical terms, for the passive in a method and for the hedges your evidence needs; your brief and style guide come first.
Did Orwell follow the six rules?
Not always. Linguists on Language Log point to passives in the essay, starting with its first sentence.
Can EdCitation make my writing plainer?
No EdCitation tool rewrites a sentence. Mechanics QA (Pro) checks formatting and language slips, and Check your paper, free, reads your brief's word limit into a checklist; the plain words are yours.
References
- Beaver, D. (2009, January 10). Orwell's liar. Language Log. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992
- Hurst, L. J. (2026, January 23). Politics and the English Language: Bodleian reprint. The Orwell Society. https://orwellsociety.com/politics-and-the-english-language-bodleian-reprint/
- Orwell, G. (1946). Politics and the English language. The Orwell Foundation. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/
- Pullum, G. K. (2006, July 18). Passive aggression. Language Log. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003366.html
- Pullum, G. K. (2011, January 24). The passive in English. Language Log. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922