book review
The art of writing Why your best isn’t always better Xxxxxxxx G
eorge Orwell is probably known best for his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Set in a dystopian future ruled by a tyrannical
political dictatorship, Nineteen Eighty-Four was responsible for spawning the popular concepts of ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Room 101’. Despite Nineteen Eighty-Four’s impressive contribution to the British television industry, it must be Orwell’s 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ that’s had the most impact on me. I fi rst came across this essay when I was studying English at university and it was a revelation. Suddenly I didn’t feel so stupid for taking ages to understand some of the terribly clever literary critics who I quoted in my essays. Maybe it was them who had the problem, not me. In this essay, Orwell talks about how we can improve the way that we write. This includes writing in the most straightforward way possible and avoiding ready-made stock phrases which might make you sound clever but are long-winded and unnecessary. Instead, he argues, you should start with the meaning of what you’re writing and
then choose the words that best express what you’re trying to communicate. Don’t let the words come fi rst, says Orwell, because they can blur what you’re trying to say and even change your meaning entirely. Let’s put this in the context of e-learning.
Imagine that you’re working with extremely technical content that’s been put together by a subject matter expert (SME) – maybe training on how to use a complex computer system or detailed information about a particular product. The content is written in a wordy and formal style which you fi nd hard to understand. As a good learning designer, you’ll probably aim to get to grips with the content itself and then edit or rewrite the expert’s text to make it more comprehensible. But how much will you really change what’s already there? Chances are you’ll rely on the structure of what your SME has put together, you’ll probably use at least chunks of their sentences, and maybe you’ll replicate their vocabulary too.
But a SME is an expert on just that – the
subject. Not writing and not e-learning design either. By reusing what they’ve written, you run the risk of replicating poorly chosen vocabulary, grammatical errors, unwieldy sentence structure, inconsistencies and counter-intuitive topic structuring.
On top of that, how about your own writing? Do you make everything as straightforward as possible or are you more concerned with making things sound as good as you can? Effective writing isn’t about showcasing your own capabilities. It’s about communicating your
meaning to learners as clearly as possible using the most appropriate words available. Writing is at the core of nearly every online training offering, so it’s crucial that we get it right. To this end, Orwell offers some tips on how to make your writing the best that it can be. I’ve omitted a couple of these, as I don’t agree with everything he says (but let’s save that for another time). Here are my top four: 1. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
2. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
3. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
4. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientifi c word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Why make anything more complicated than it has to be? Writing for e-learning isn’t a chance for you to unleash your inner creative writer (most of the time, anyway) and it’s not an excuse for regurgitating corporate jargon either. The lessons I’ve learned from Orwell have
served me well in the world of instructional design so far. But, you know, sometimes rules are made to be broken. Just make it the exception, rather than rule, to avoid wandering too remotely from your intended implication.
Megan McIlvenna is an instructional designer at Mind Click
@the_e_learner
Writing for e-learning isn’t a chance for you to unleash your inner creative writer (most of the time, anyway) and it’s not an excuse for regurgitating corporate jargon either.
e.learning age september 2015 41
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