ABSTRACT
The traditional view on English style is simply put. Be clear; avoid ornament; let the message reveal itself. From Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift in the eighteenth century to George Orwell in the twentieth, the literary critics and experts on writing have agreed. Style is not something to be strained for or added on: it is there in the writer –or the subject – waiting to be expressed. What is needed is plainness, decorum, economy, precision – above all, clarity. What is not needed is rhetoric or embellishment.
