Many people in business like to read good literature. No doubt, a lot of them studied such books as 1984 or Animal Farm, both by George Orwell, when in school. Orwell had six rules of writing:

1. Never use a figure of speech you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word or jargon.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than saying something ridiculous.

Yet, at work, those same people do everything they can to break Orwell’s rules with their own brand of jargon-heavy, adjective-overloaded, ego-centric writing. How about Mark Twain? His books – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper – inspired millions. Well, Twain, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, also had a few rules of writing:

1. Say what you are proposing to say, don’t merely come near it.
2. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
3. Get rid of non-essential matter.
4. Don’t omit necessary details.
5. Avoid slovenliness of form.
6. Always use good grammar.
7. Employ a simple, straightforward style.

Finally, there was Ernest Hemingway whose The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls revamped the literary landscape in America and around the world. The master of succinct writing, Hemingway had fewer rules than the others:

1. Use short sentences.
2. Use short first paragraphs.
3. Use vigorous English.
4. Be positive, not negative.
5. Never have only four rules.

We should all remember these authors and put their rules alongside our keyboard the next time we sit down to write.