Word of Mouth yesterday was dedicated entirely to a discussion of Orwell's rules for the use of English with the apparent agreement of the panellists that the rules were really useful except when they weren't.
Now following just one of the rules the above sentence would have been "Word of Mouth was dedicated to Orwell's rules of English usage with the panellists agreeing that the rules were good excpet when they weren't." Now is this better? This decision to both agree and disagree with the six simple rules was clearly the only possible outcome. It of course all depends on what you are writing. As David Aaronovitch said some of the rules are "unpoetical" in that they remove everything but the utilitarian components of language. While this was ideal for Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Orwell's analysis of everything from widespread political systems to the intensely-observed minutiae of nature notes, it almost forbids any magic realism and much other writing. However, this does not forbid one from holding up Orwell as amongst the finest writers who have ever existed. The rules force clarity upon the text - they imbue any piece of writing with authority. Now could the rules be programmed easily? I suspect that the grammar checker on MS word already has some of this built in. In the days when I had it turned on, it did seem to have an obsession with active/passive voicing.
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