Adam Smith, George Orwell, and Rules for Writing

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith used rules about writing as a metaphor for rules of conduct. He examines conduct by two different measures. In one measure, he considers what rules one would need to follow to, in my inelegant paraphrase, avoid being an actively scummy person. On the other hand, he also considers what rules of conduct one would need to observe to be a positively virtuous and praiseworthy person.

In the first case, the rules are fairly simple and straightforward. The rules needed to avoid being an actively awful person, in Smith’s view, “are accurate in the highest degree, and admit of no exceptions or modifications, but such as may be ascertained as accurately as the rules themselves, and which generally, indeed, flow from the very same principles with them.” To Smith, these rules are clear and straightforward, and when there are exceptions to these rules, the exceptions themselves will be equally clear and straightforward, and will embody the same ideas and principles as the rule itself.

Fulfilling these rules is a very low bar, Smith says. A person who does little more than minding their own business and keeping their hands to themselves may not inspire admiration, but their conduct “fulfils, however, all the rules of what is peculiarly called justice, and does every thing which his equals can with propriety force him to do, or which they can punish him for not doing. We may often fulfil all the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing.”

On the other hand, what about the rules one should follow if they want to do more than merely avoid being an actively vicious person? What rules of conduct should you follow if you want to be a virtuous person of good character, the kind of person who is deservedly praiseworthy? Smith says the “general rules of almost all the virtues, the general rules which determine what are the offices of prudence, of charity, of generosity, of gratitude, of friendship, are in many respects loose and inaccurate, admit of many exceptions, and require so many modifications, that it is scarce possible to regulate our conduct entirely by a regard to them.” Citing a rule about how one ought to express gratitude as a seemingly straightforward case, Smith says we find that with “the most superficial examination, however, this rule will appear to be in the highest degree loose and inaccurate, and to admit of ten thousand exceptions.”

And this leads to Smith’s analogy with the rules of writing. Smith says the rules of justice, the ones one must follow to avoid being a positive menace, “may be compared to the rules of grammar” and “are precise, accurate, and indispensable.” You either used the correct tense, or you didn’t. You matched your subject with your verb, or you didn’t. But merely producing grammatically correct writing doesn’t make one a great writer, just as “sitting still and doing nothing” does not make someone a praiseworthy and virtuous person. But in the domain of writing, when “critics lay down [rules] for the attainment of what is sublime and elegant in composition” we find these rules “are loose, vague, and indeterminate, and present us rather with a general idea of the perfection we ought to aim at, than afford us any certain and infallible directions for acquiring it.” This is also true of virtuous conduct – any rules or guidelines we might try to explicitly formulate will be loose, vague, and indeterminate. This doesn’t mean nothing useful can be said. But the rules of virtuous behavior are flexible and organic, rather than precise and algorithmic.

One of the most respected writers of the 20th century was George Orwell. In one of his more famous essays, Politics and the English Language, Orwell attempted to put out clear and straightforward rules for how to improve the quality of one’s writing. He lays out six rules. Here are the first five:

i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

These seem to be rules that are like rules of grammar – precise and accurate. So did Orwell manage to crack the code, and create clear rules for sublime and elegant composition? No. His final rule is as follows:

vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

The best Orwell could do was say “Follow these rules to improve the quality of your writing, but in cases where following them produces poor writing just break the rules.” Even his rule about breaking the rules isn’t very specific – what exactly would make a bit of writing “barbarous” is certainly a loose, vague, and indeterminate guideline. To be clear, I think this is to Orwell’s credit – he recognized his inability to create rules that would always work and therefore his rules should not be treated as sacred or unbreakable.

What’s also interesting is that Orwell, like Smith, expected people to be able to recognize what is good or bad writing (or virtuous behavior) independently of the rules. Orwell’s final injunction is to break the rules when they produce bad writing. But how are we to know what constitutes bad writing? The answer can’t be whether or not the writing matches the rules – if that were the case, Orwell’s final rule would make no sense. Orwell, like Smith, understood that rules are but an imperfect attempt to describe an independently existing phenomenon – and that the reality of that phenomenon determines the rules rather than the other way around.