- Keep the language crisp and pungent; prefer the forthright to the pompous and ornate.
- Do not stray from the subject; omit the extraneous, no matter how brilliant it may seem or even be.
- Favor the active voice and shun streams of polysyllables and prepositional phrases.
- Keep sentences and paragraphs short, and vary the structure of both.
- Be frugal in the use of adjectives and adverbs; let nouns and verbs show their own power.
I hope the CIA had the decency to acknowledge their debt to George Orwell, from whom they have borrowed virtually wholesale.
Wednesday, July 09, 2014
Writing Advice for CIA Operatives
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They tip their hats to Fowler and Strunk and White and others, but not to Orwell. I wonder whether this advice applies to speech as well as writing — when, for instance, an operative is addressing a victim of torture.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point, Michael. On the other hand, surely the torture you refer to is of the self-inflicted kind, for I cannot believe that any member of the CIA would "indulge" in this sort of behaviour.
ReplyDeleteThey say that sarcasm is the lowest form ......