MxMIndia

Tag: grammar

  • Besides grammar and spelling, here are some other etiquette tips for writers

    The Anchor: 5 tips on how to make writing copy-editor-friendly, if there is such a thing

    By Vidya Heble

     

    #1 Making it bigger / bold / coloured doesn’t work if your writing is bad. In fact, if it is big, bold and/or coloured, editors may regard your writing with suspicion even if it is perfectly good. Just use a standard font – MS Word’s defaults are fine – and a decent size such as 12 points.

     

    #2 Look it up. Don’t use a word that you think sounds like the word you should actually be using. It could mean something else altogether.

     

    #3 If it’s a long word, ask whether it needs to be there. If it’s a long sentence, practise saying it. If it’s convoluted, shorten the words and the sentence because you’ve probably created a bhelpuri that doesn’t belong.

     

    #4 Don’t use sms speak in official communication, even if it is chat or, in fact, sms.  Good language is a good habit. Not only will it tell the recipient that you care about how you say what you say, it will also make disciplined communication second nature for you. Note that this does not apply when you are chatting with friends or making non-official posts on Facebook – here you’re free to do what you like.

     

    #5 Don’t forget the basics. If you’re writing a story, type your name at the top or the bottom of it, or put your name in the filename if possible. Yes, you sent it from your email address but the editors are likely to have more things on their plates than your masterpiece, so don’t make them go hunting down the origin of the story for the author’s name, when they get round to editing it. If you’re sending out a press release, check the file name. Don’t send out ‘(Company name) revised’, or ‘(CEO’s first name)’. Give it a short explanatory filename which includes the bare basics, such as ‘MxMIndia 1st Anniversary’ for instance.

     

    Vidya Heble is deputy editor at MxMIndia, and is thrilled when good copy comes her way.

     

  • Perhaps afraid of committing themselves with a "will", or wanting to sound polite and ineffable, more and more people are using "would" in the wrong place. Vidya Heble tries to restore order

    Speaking of Which – The Woulds Are Not Lovely

    By Vidya Heble

     

    Perhaps afraid of committing themselves with a “will”, or wanting to sound polite and ineffable, more and more people are using “would” in the wrong place. It is reminiscent of the backlash against “me”, which resulted in everyone saying “I” even when “me” was the correct word. That wave has begun to recede, fortunately, but there’s a new one upon us. It’s the tsunami of the “would”.

     

    I see it in at least one press release every other day, and I kid you not. There’s an announcement of someone’s impending appointment or a product launch or an event, and we are told, “So-and-so would take charge on Monday.” “The gadget would be priced at Rs x.” It should be obvious to the reader that “will” is the right word to use in these instances. So why don’t they say “will”? (Or are they secretly telling us that So-and-so would take charge on Monday if he could shake off the massive hangover he’s bound to get after the Sunday party? And that the gadget would be priced at Rs x if the marketers felt generous, but instead they are selling it at Rs x++, suckers?)

     

    I can only imagine that it is some sort of desire to sound fancy – that is what drives most of the drivel these days.  But being wrong is not fancy at all, and the sooner the would-wielders learn it, the better.

     

    “Would” is, of course, used by news writers when quoting someone in indirect speech, ie without inverted commas. For example: The announcement would revolutionize the industry, he said. “The announcement will revolutionize the industry,” he said. When “would” is used in the context of a future event, it indicates a condition attached to it – ie, “I would if I could”. It is also a super-polite way to say “will”, but not quite in Press Release Land: “Mr Tochuka Sui would be happy to attend.”

     

    There are many other legitimate uses of “would”, and who better than the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv43.shtml)  and the British Council (http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/english-grammar/verbs/modal-verbs/will-or-would) to explain them?

     

    I would hit the sack now if I could, but there are miles to go before I sleep.

     

    Vidya Heble is Deputy Editor at MxMIndia, when she is not twitching obsessive-compulsively.

     

  • Back in the gory old days of hard-copy reports and chattering teleprinters (huh, what?), reporters got short shrift from editors. Today’s comparatively cossetted bunch may like to take a peek into the past, says Vidya Heble

    The Anchor: 5 old-school rules for today’s writers

    By Vidya Heble

     

    #1 Your story got laughed at.

    You wrote that fancy intro – and the editor read it out, mockingly, to the rest of the newsroom staff who chuckled while you stood there red-faced. This is exactly what happened to me, and I remember which story it was as well as the lavender prose that I thought made a great opening paragraph. Lesson: There’s a difference between lyrical and laughable, and the quicker you learn it, the better.

     

    #2 Your story got mangled.

    Maybe your language wasn’t clear. Did you try to write fancy? If so, the sub-editor didn’t get it. The end result – your story ends up very different from what it was supposed to be. Lesson: Write simply and clearly.

     

    #3 Your story died.

    There were times when your carefully composed prose just vanished. Was there a black hole into which it had gone? Yes, it was called the news editor’s dustbin, and if you asked why that had happened, you got sat down for a lecture, if you were lucky, or more likely ridicule. Lesson: If you want it to survive, write it well.

     

    #4 Your big story of the day was an obituary.

    Newbies were taught the hard way, and the deceptively simple obituary or death notice was among the starting courses. You had to get it right, and if you didn’t, you got – yes, ridiculed. Lesson: No job is too small, no story too simple.

     

    #5 You rose the hard way.

    You worked your story well, you wrote it well, you cooperated with the editing desk to make it look good. And when it shone, you got that boost. Not like today where one rises at the job almost as easily and quickly as one rises in the elevator. (By “pushing the right buttons”? Wicked.) Lesson: It may seem as if hard work doesn’t pay, but you get a reward that the easy risers don’t.

     

    Vidya Heble is Deputy Editor at MXMIndia.com.

     

  • Write better, communicate better – whether an email or a project report

    New Column | Speaking of Which by Vidya Heble

    Being a deskie is not easy. There are very few pieces of copy that require no work or come with no errors. But ask any sub and he or she will tell you that it’s not the mistakes that are a pain. It’s the incorrect usage that bothers them no end. Some of these are no-brainers, but there are many which even the best editor would need to labour over.

     

    Starting today (Aug 31), MxMIndia brings you a new fortnightly series titled ‘Speaking of which’ that (or should we say ‘which’?) will, among other things, talk of common errors people in our media make, and how good usage can make for better communication. Written by Vidya Heble, Deputy Editor, MxMIndia and Managing Editor, The Blue Pencil Company, a content editing and writing start-up. Vidya has over two decades of experience in advertising, print and online media… in India, the Gulf and Singapore. She has also edited books, written speeches and communiques and recently took a sabbatical to set up and execute the online avatar of a popular show. Enjoy!

     

    The ironic ally

    Vidya Heble

    Twice in the same week recently, I’ve come across the word “ironical”. It’s almost without thinking that I changed it to “ironic” (because “ironical” is not a word), but the second encounter did make me wonder why people are starting to do this. Ironic is a fine word on its own. Why add -al to it?

     

    The answer, unfortunately, is the all-too-common one: To sound smarter. Who knows, given the general level of knowledge, it may work. Or perhaps the -al-wielders just copy a word they’ve seen elsewhere, without knowing quite what it means and not being bothered to look it up (to digress, it pains me that the more tools there are for looking up stuff, and the easier those tools are to access – viz, smartphones and a dictionary/thesaurus at your fingertips – the less people seem to think they need to actually use those tools) and thinking that because it looks impressive, it must be so.

     

    And the wrong gets perpetuated.

     

    I can hear mutterings of “but ironical is not wrong”. Sorry to bust your bubble, Bubba, but it is. -al is a suffix used to turn some nouns into adjectives, as in logic >> logical. Ironic is already an adjective, and therefore should not have -al tacked onto it.

     

    Update: MxM India received a few calls to say that “ironical” is indeed a word. Well, the fact is that it has been created, and does not mean anything different from “ironic”. As grammarist.com says, “Because the suffix conventions in English are inconsistent, ironical will probably continue to appear. Because there are no simple, consistent rules for these suffixes, and because spell-check approves of ironical, the word will continue to appear. And perhaps someday it will find a meaning of its own.”

     

    Meanwhile, Thomas McAllister on his English Usage blog decides to ignore “ironical” altogether: “I plan to stick with ‘ironic’, if for no better reason than not to be laughed off the block.”

     

    If it helps, the Merriam-Webster dictionary has no entry for “ironical”. If you insist on using it, for whatever reason, remember that it is a redundancy. You may or may not get points, but you may also lose out for trying to make your writing look fancy.

     

    Tip: An easy way to remember – would you say “sarcastical”?