MxMIndia

Tag: Speaking Of Which

  • In which the column goes on holiday for a while.

    Speaking of Which | Break Time

    By Vidya Heble

     

    Speaking of Which is taking a break for a while, going on what is known as a hiatus. The dictionary describes it as a noun meaning “A pause or gap in a sequence, series, or process.” And the synonyms for it include the word “chasm”. Which is what one feels like leaping into, overwhelmed by the inexorable advance of bad grammar and the incomprehensible word arrangements that pass for sentences. Kidding; we’ll be back, so keep your eyes on MxMIndia.com.

     

    This is probably the appropriate time to dwell on the column’s name. Specifically, the use of “which” versus “that”. It is true that the two words are interchanged at times, and there are even occasions when it is not incorrect to do so (usually the occasion involves a gun pointing at one’s head), but the fact is that there is a specific rule governing the use of “which” as opposed to “that”. And the rule involves an instrument of torture known as a restrictive clause. It’s explained in this Writer’s Digest article: http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/which-vs-that and, even more entertainingly, by Grammar Girl: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/which-versus-that.aspx

     

    I couldn’t do better, so I’ll leave you with those links.

     

    PS: If there is one recommendation I can give, it is this: Look It Up. Even if sounds right, just look it up anyway. I do, often, sometimes more than once. And I’ve been at it for 25 years. So don’t ever feel that looking it up is beneath you. Be it a fact, a word, a phrase, a name… with ever-increasing ways to check, there is no reason not to. If nothing, it’ll serve to avoid howlers like this one from a recent press release: “…welcomes its visitors with appeasing colors.”

     

    And a point to note is that mistakes happen. Nobody’s perfect, and you shouldn’t let a mistake be the end of the world for you. But don’t make it a habit, either!

     

  • There are press releases, and there are press releases. Then there is gibberish.

    Speaking of Which | The Importance of Being Coherent

    By Vidya Heble

     

    This is the story of a press release. Once upon a time someone wanted to send out an announcement. This can be done in various ways – fact-efficient and to the point; or laden with company info and logos in headers and footers but with enough information that the copy editor can relatively easily pull out a story after hacking away the extra foliage.

     

    Sometimes however, one sees releases that quite simply boggle the mind. There is one from an outdoor agency, which gives us nothing more than a handful of opinions and a sort of teaser to a story. One can do nothing with this.

     

    Then there was one that turned up and gripped my consciousness to the extent that only speaking about it in Speaking of Which can provide relief. Copy editors are used to prising out facts deeply buried under verbiage, but here the main fact, the story itself, wasn’t even there. We had to surmise what it was. The whole thing, even after three reads, sounded like inebriated thoughts that someone had, “creatively” perhaps, jotted down.

     

    We should not name the organization or any of the people – so I have given them generic names; the people are called by standard character names from Hindi films. This is how the release began, and how it ended, verbatim. Only the proper names have been changed, and identifying words replaced in square brackets. Read every word, and vow never to write like this.

     

    START

    “The definition of advertising and marketing is changing , o is the definition of mediums be it tvc, print or design, they have to blend in very well to push the brand in the new age market, each medium is depended on the other for the impact of the brand, that’s the reality today where design have started playing a major in India as well.

     

    Design is relatively new compared to other mediums in our country, brands have discovered the need of great design at every consumer interface, There is a great need of design and aesthetics while keeping the brand philosophy in mind in a clutter and massive market like ours.

     

    Company So-and-So has grown to be one of the upcoming [organizations] in India today, For last one year or so we have been toying around and have been taking good amount of [certain] projects and clients on board, only when we felt we are ready today to launch a new vertical we have decided to announced,  we have a great set up right sets of people from [one function] and [another function] as well,

     

    Raj who has recently joined Company So-and-So as [designation], will be involved in Company So-and-So’s Baby as well, as he has spend some time in [other functions] as well This will be fronted by Amit and Vijay along with Raj who will take care of the [Raj’s function].

     

    Like the philosophy of Company So-and-So in design too, Two or at least one, out of Three senior guys will be directly involved in the each and every thing that comes out of this unit.

     

    Company So-and-So’s Baby, a brand consultancy focused on multiplying your brand & business growth. Because what we define should keep your brand alive for years to come. Give your brand enough opportunities to leverage. With an eclectic mix of exciting experiences, nurture a loyal audience.

     

    From defining a path to growth to creating a name, nomenclature, verbal & visual language, packaging, tangible retail engagement and viral content for the virtual world. Company So-and-So’s Baby combines intuitive force to achieve objective growth. Applies behavioral insight to create a world of meaningful brand rituals. Grooms consumer communities for cultural action.

     

    Over the last few months of undercover existence; Company So-and-So’s Baby, has squared with strengths of [various brands and clients – one whose name was misspelled].”

    END

     

    The first two paragraphs sound like quotes that should be attributed to someone. What the actual announcement is, is never stated. All the sentences are disjointed, often incoherent. Two paragraphs from the end, it sounds like a pitch to a client instead of a news release.

     

    We don’t know what went wrong, but we hope something did. We hope this is not what the organization thinks is a press release.

     

  • The proof of the pudding, and other dishy delights

    Speaking of Which | Turn of Phrase

    By Vidya Heble

     

    Speaking of Which doesn’t only pay attention to the printed word. Even television is not exempt. For example, the very cute Vaseline lotion ad with mother and daughter playing a hand-clapping game ends with the word Smiles misspelt as Smlies. Airing after airing. Perhaps no one from the client, agency or channel pays attention to it? With the amount of money being splashed out on TVCs, they can afford to get details right. Or maybe the money makes details irrelevant?

     

    In any case, in between my steady diet of English crime shows, now and then I switch to Comedy Central if I’m in the zone to catch Dharma and Greg, or even Everybody Loves Raymond if I’m desperate in the slot before The Mentalist comes on. I’ve noticed Comedy Central airing a promo that asks whether your life is as dull as dishwater (or something to that effect). Actually, aside from the question of your life, dishwater isn’t dull so much as yuck-tasting. It is full of bouncy suds, sometimes it has bits of dried food floating in it – it’s interesting, at the least. What is dull is ditchwater. In Idiomland, that is.

     

    Idiomland is that quaint old era we used to inhabit in our school days. I don’t know if anyone has “idioms and phrases” in school any more (or even if anyone goes to school any more, they all seem to drop out and become geniuses or startup wizards).  In Idiomland, it is assumed that you have either gone to school or have read enough to make school redundant. Trouble is that these days, reading is confined to – and confused with – SMS messages. Or, if we’re lucky, Facebook and Twitter messages. Try fitting a “proper” idiom into those. It’ll be like trying to pass a camel through the eye of a needle. Why anyone tried to do that in the first place, beats me; but it’s such an entertaining phrase that it’s worth remembering.

     

    So, how do you remember that ditchwater refers to lack of sparkle, and dishwater to bad cooking? It may help if you associate dishes with cooking. Another food-related idiom that is often misused is “The proof of the pudding”. Americans, with their penchant for upping food portions and shortening everything else, have turned this into “The proof is in the pudding”, which is not correct. You just have to ask, “Proof of what?” The proof of the pudding itself, of course. The actual phrase is “The proof of the pudding is in the eating (of it).”

     

    Enough sermons and soda-water; we can return to gastronomic idioms in another edition, and till then hope we don’t have to eat our words!

     

  • It's probably impossible to change this now, but it's useful to know in any case – the difference between the adjectives 'suspect' and 'suspicious'

    Speaking of Which | The Suspicious Object

    By Vidya Heble

     

    How many times in the recent past have we heard “If you see any suspicious object, please inform…” When there is absolutely nothing else to occupy the funny zone, my mind sometimes conjures up the image of a package lurking behind a potted plant, peering out suspiciously at oblivious passers-by.

     

    Because, although it is a battle already lost, suspicious means that one feels suspicious or one suspects (v) something, and suspect (adj) means that one is under suspicion. Which, if one is a person, makes one a suspect (n). (But if one is a suitcase, it makes one an object of suspicion.) Suspicious implies cognizance, the ability to question the integrity or trustworthiness of a person, event or thing. To put it simply, a package can’t suspect something. Only a living person (or sniffer dog, come to think of it) can.

     

    But almost no one is fighting this battle any more. Terror threats have made all packages, objects, suitcases and bulging black bags suspicious, and it is too huge an Augean stable to even start cleaning up. Although I have to note this: In Singapore, the announcements on one of the train lines use “suspicious-looking” instead of just “suspicious”. (Different companies run different train lines in Singapore, so the uniforms as well the announcements differ.)

     

    If you search for an answer to this question, the most common result is a reference to grammarian Wilson Follett’s comment (under transitive/intransitive) in Modern American Usage (1966): “‘Suspicious’ should designate the persons harboring a suspicion and ‘suspect’, the person who is the object of it.”

     

    Another word that falls into this category of animating the inanimate, is “vexed question”. I’ve been very pleased to note that some publications have been using the correct word, that is “vexing” (or “vexatious”). Because, of course, it is the reader who is vexed, not the question.

     

  • If it sounds like a word you think you read somewhere which sounds like what you want to say… it just may be a Malapropism!

    Speaking of Which | Are You A Mrs Malaprop?

    By Vidya Heble

     

    Are You A Mrs Malaprop? This was the headline of an article in the Reader’s Digest which I came across when very young. It was, as were so many other things courtesy the Digest, my introduction to the Richard Sheridan play The Rivals, featuring the character of the meddlesome woman who kept mixing up long words to comic effect.

     

    Among the famous Malapropisms are “as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile” (meaning to say alligator); “illiterate him from your memory” (obliterate); and “the very pineapple of politeness” (pinnacle). You can check out this link http://www.fun-with-words.com/mala_malapropisms.html for more Malapropisms and other wordy high-jinks. There’s a link on that page to real-world mixed-up words by famous people too, for some lunchtime laughs.

     

    Malapropisms are not confined to theatre and well-known personalities – you may have cracked one yourself at some point. In a world where people seemingly have less time to read and refer, and less patience to look up things, but where pressure to communicate well has not slackened (for which may the gods be praised), it is only too easy to type a word which you think is right, because it sounds like a word you think you read somewhere which sounds like what you want to say… and you get the drift. If you’re lucky you’ll end up coining genuinely funny bloopers which may get the error excused on sheer grounds of hilarity. But more often than not, mixed-up words are just plain wrong. They sound clunky, they don’t make sense, and what is worst, they sound like they are correct, and hence get propagated.

     

    I came across one recently, referring to a movie: “It doesn’t shirk from portraying the grey, the black and the complex.” You don’t shirk from something, you shirk work, or a responsibility. The word this writer wanted was “shrink”. I don’t shrink from stating the facts, and you should not shrink from consulting a dictionary. It’s a duty many of us shirk.

     

    Another one I’ve seen in reports referring to large crowds is “hoard” of people. Unless the reports are about a sort of giant human-accumulator, the word for a large number of people really is “horde”. A hoard is a store or a stash, of foodgrains or black money, for example. It is also a verb which means “to store, often in secret or obsessively”.

     

    Another odd word substitution I’ve seen is the use of “delves” instead of “dwells”, as in to say someone “dwells on a topic”. You delve into a subject but you dwell on it. I can’t think of any easy way to remember the difference (it’s not even a confusion I would have thought possible, but inventiveness has no bounds) so I can only say, with tiresome repetitiveness, “consult the dictionary”.

     

    A few other entries in my ‘Common Confusions’ list:

    Evoke – produce a result from another party; eg, evoke sympathy from the reader.

    Evince – show a result in yourself; eg, evince interest in the matter.

     

    Disinterested – neutral

    Uninterested – actively not bothered

     

    Amoral – not concerned with right or wrong

    Immoral – not following accepted moral standards

     

    Born – having started life

    Borne – carried

     

    Flounder – to move clumsily; to have difficulty doing something

    Founder – to fail

     

  • Use language with respect, and you will eventually treat the subject with respect, too

    Speaking of Which | Respectfully Yours

    By Vidya Heble

     

    Last week Speaking of Which was trudging through the sand at Goafest, hence the column got pushed a week forward. But even amidst adland frenzy, we were “on duty”, as it were, and spotted boo-boos here and there. Such as “Intergrated” on the display slides during the Abbys. But as we were told, the presentation was put together at record speed, so a typo here and there is very overlookable. Perhaps it’ll serve to “nazar utaarne ke liye” considering that the rest of the fest went off blisteringly well, even in light of the JWT-Ford scandal.

     

    Which brings us, as it happens, in the direction of our topic.

     

    Apart from the fact of the scam ads (ads created solely for entry into awards and not actually released by the client), what was disturbing was the image of women gagged, bound and stuffed into a car boot. In the light of atrocities on women, many of them in moving vehicles, this revealed a line of thinking which must not be allowed to proliferate. Partly, I blame language.

     

    We speak how we think. And often, in reverse, when we say something often enough we also begin to think that way. Think of “Chicks in the dicky”. Let us imagine that the creative brainstorming team at the agency threw out this, or a similar phrase.  It sounds fun and edgy, not “bad” like, say, “Women in the boot”.

     

    When I was cutting my teeth in the newspaper world my boss yelled at us for using the word “kid” instead of “children”. “A kid is the young one of a goat!” he would thunder. “Are we goats?” He hardwired, into me at least, some degree of awareness about words that we casually toss out, such as kids and cops. Though language has loosened up to a great extent, I still say “children” at first mention, and if there are many mentions then I turn “kids” into “children” intermittently through the copy as well.

     

    Another thing that I learnt is that the way you use language reflects on you as well. It does not have to change what you say; you can still write about police high-handedness without referring to them as “cops” (headlines are different). It just means that you are a polite person, and that’s not a bad image to project.

     

    I don’t know what transpired at the creative meetings (if there were any) that led to the horrible Ford Figo posters. But there must have been something leading up to the thought that images of women gagged and tied in a car boot is funny. Maybe the creative team needs to leave their desks and come out to, say, the real world. Maybe they need to stop using terms like “chick” and “babe”, and tell it like it is.

     

    Use language with respect, and you will eventually treat the subject with respect, too.

     

  • Is auto-complete ruling your life? Or setting you up?

    Speaking of Which by Vidya Heble | The Laughter Edition

    By Vidya Heble

     

    Sundays are that much better since Ashish Shakya came into my life via the pages of the Hindustan Times. It is rare that a column by him does not leave me shaking with laughter, and that can only be a good thing.

     

    But Mr Shakya has competition, it seems. And it comes not from a fellow columnist but from an unlikely source – the very serious news pages of HT. These are the pages which, day after day, bring us reports of violence, assault, rape and murder. Amidst the unrelenting grimness, readers are hard pressed to find something to chuckle about. But the HT has unwittingly provided us with just that.

     

    A recent report on – but of course – severe punishment for rapists in uniform told us, at the tail end of its five paragraphs, that the death penalty “can be now invoked … in cases where any person who has once been coveted for sexual assault, is found guilty of repeating the act.” Did anyone hear “Freudian”? When I had finished laughing I wondered how on earth they managed that. Maybe someone should have submitted it to DYAC (Damn You Auto Correct, a repository of thumbs-generated howlers)?

     

    At least that one was at the bottom of the page, literally in a corner. But as if to make up for that, just two days later readers were treated to the story, leading on a facing Metro page, of a suspended woman police constable who consumed poison at Vidhan Bhavan. She was taken to hospital and readers were helpfully told about the procedure carried out to pump out the poison: “A gastric lavage includes inserting a pipe through the nose down the throat and to the stomach after which the contents of the stomach are auctioned out.”

     

    I… don’t think I want to make a bid in that one.

     

    These are embarrassing for the newspaper, but that’s about it. Not the end of the world, one would think. They’re not grammatical mistakes that can lead to gains or losses in the millions – unlike the 2006 case of Canadian company Rogers Inc which paid dearly for the presence of a comma in a contract.

     

    The contract said that the agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.” Rogers’ intent in 2002 was to lock into a long-term deal of at least five years. But the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) reached another conclusion.

     

    The validity of the contract and the millions of dollars at stake all came down to one point – the second comma in the sentence. Had it not been there, the right to cancel wouldn’t have applied to the first five years of the contract and Rogers would be protected from the higher rates it faced.

     

    “Based on the rules of punctuation,” the comma in question “allows for the termination of the [contract] at any time, without cause, upon one-year’s written notice,” the regulator said.

     

    Whoops.

     

    Closer to home, and more recent in memory, is the story of Air Asia, or the comma that let it in.

     

    “The government of India has reviewed the position in this regard and decided to permit foreign airlines also to invest, in the capital of Indian companies, operating scheduled and non-scheduled air transport services, up to the limit of 49% of their paid-up capital,” the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion said in its press note. Had there been no comma after “companies”, things would have been clear. It would have meant foreign airlines could only invest in existing carriers. The ambiguous comma allowed finance ministry officials to argue in favour of the Rs 800 million ($15 million) joint venture.

     

    So a little (more) attention to grammar can not only keep you from becoming an object of ridicule, it could also save you a lot of cash and save you from being sued.

     

    For which publishers should be properly grateful, as in the fictitious case of Paul Gallico’s Hiram Holliday, that gallant, Walter Mitty-like character who, with a firm pencil, had added a comma to a news report which saved the publisher a small fortune in a trial. The grateful publisher sent Mr Holliday on a world tour. Hint, hint.

     

    PS: I have long been a fan of Oh! Calcutta for its food, but a small ad it has been running in the dailies has left me disappointed. Describing a vegetarian food festival, the ad says the ingredients “intermingle with freshly grounded spices”. Yes, a firm foundation, especially when the ad is repeated a few days later. Oh, Oh! Calcutta, I am so disappointed. What next, misspelled menus?

     

  • Being aware of bias in one's choice of words is among the first steps in an egalitarian world

    Speaking of Which | Gender Defender

    By Vidya Heble

     

    The number of people who write or edit for a living and have not used the term “fair sex” is likely to be rather small. I’m pretty sure I’ve done it myself in my unenlightened days, though I can’t recall any precise instance. It’s one of those phrases which rolls lightly off the tips of our fingers and takes its place amidst the crowds of jostling words that vie for public attention every day. And we think no more of them, once written and saved.

     

    But it is important to pay attention to these and other phrases, which typify a kind of thinking that should have been swept out of the door long ago. Why call women the “fair sex”? Why look for some cutesy set of words to describe, plain and simple, women? Because we are uncomfortable using that word, and I kid you not. We’d rather say “ladies” or “sisters” or, yuckily, “females”. (You did know, didn’t you, that women “perspire” whereas ladies “glow”?)

     

    Secondly, why are we even implying that women are fair and men are not? It’s an ancient, faux-servile-complimentary mode of referring to the supposedly dainty breed called “ladies”, which really has no place in the world of women who drive trains, build skyscrapers and deliver their children in the fields in the middle of a day’s work. Instead of pretending, why don’t we just do it, and actually respect and protect women? The most infuriating thing is to hear drivel such as “fair sex” on the one hand and on the other, read about members of this dainty brigade gagged, bound, brutalized, killed or left to die on the street.

     

    Moreover, it is but a step from saying “fair sex” to saying “weaker sex” when you are next groping for a pretty phrase and don’t want to repeat yourself. This one only perpetuates the stereotype that women are less capable. Yes, they are for the most part physically less strong than men, but as countless men will tell you, they are made of steel otherwise! There is nothing weak about the women who make the wheels of the world go round, be it a CEO or your domestic helper.

     

  • Spelling and grammar is more important than looks, at least for nearly half of the single people in a recent survey. Vidya Heble wonders why

    Speaking of Which | Wats In A Date

    By Vidya Heble

     

    According to a recent online survey of 1,700 adults, 43 percent of online daters consider bad grammar a “major” turnoff. More than a third (35 percent) think good grammar is sexy, and 22 percent couldn’t care less.

     

    A longtime friend and former colleague read this and, naturally, thought of Speaking of Which, so he was kind enough to send it on.

     

    The survey said – ahem – women have stronger feelings about grammar than men do. Check it out: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/13777.aspx

     

    The survey was carried out by a firm that offers professional proofreading and editing services (yes, they exist, and in case you’re wondering about the difference between editing and proofreading, we shall speak of that too in a subsequent column). So it may seem like a vested interest, but the fact is, and I know it has struck a chord with some of you, that a clumsily worded self-portrait may not even attract a second look.

     

    As one of the commenters on the story said, “The lack of proper grammar is a sign of not putting much effort into how you come across to others. If you’re trying to date, or get a job, you should want to sound like you give a darn about the impression others will have of you. I can forgive the occasional typo if the majority of the written words look like thought and time have been put into them.”

     

    Another remarked: “It displays a lack of intelligence and intelligence is very very sexy. It also reveals a lack of attention to the world itself; good grammar can be achieved just by paying merely attention when one reads – if one reads. It’s also just plain rude. If a person really wants to find a life partner, taking the time to proofread is merely polite.”

     

    One does not need advanced degrees to ensure that what one says is reasonably accurate and free of boo-boos. Every program – short of, perhaps, Notepad – comes with spelling and grammar checks, those wavy green and red lines under flagged words and phrases in MS Word for example. Even Google and Gmail check your writing as you type. Your writing need not be flowery – in fact, such attempts usually backfire – but there is little reason it can’t be written in plain English (you know, no SMS-speak) and be free of basic mistakes. In this era, there is very little excuse for not doing so, especially when one is online. There is help for everything on the internet.

     

    Why does it matter? As the commenters on that survey said, it shows that you care at least that much about how you portray yourself. This is, of course, on a dating site where your image is vital. But the principle holds in other situations too, because every time you send out a piece of writing, you are sending out a message about yourself. The sub-text of what you write – is it clean, well formatted, efficiently worded, accurate as to spelling and grammar – tells the recipient that you care about your work.

     

    You don’t need to wait until you write something “significant”, if you make disciplined writing second nature, anything you write can be significant.

     

  • When a word or phrase is used slightly differently, its meaning can change, and not slightly. Vidya Heble makes a case for using the right word

    Speaking of Which | I Mean To Say

    By Vidya Heble

     

    Speaking of Which regulars may know that the Hindustan Times is my daily of choice. It’s not perfect but it’s good. Among the high points associated with it is the Sunday edition – one, for Ashish Shakya’s side-splitting column, and two, for Brunch.

     

    Brunch is in demand in my building; because of some foul-up with coupons, HT doesn’t come to the other family residence, which is in the same building as mine. They read other newspapers but HT Brunch gets shared between me and my nephew. Update: The coupon problem was solved, probably even as this was being posted, and HT arrives at the door of the other family house again.

     

    One reading quirk I have is that of starting magazines from the back page and reading them backwards, as it were. Apparently it’s not uncommon, and it may be a sign of a gifted person. Some would say “special”, but I digress. The fact is that the back of the magazine has the interesting little tasty bits, like the last page with fun stuff on it, etc. It just progresses from there.

     

    The Brunch of February 3 similarly ended up being opened from the back page, after I had looked at the front cover and then the back cover. This issue is the Readers’ Special with contributions by, well, readers. Readers aren’t writers (though I have to say some writers aren’t writers either), so I wouldn’t expect them to know the ins and outs of, um, writing. But the staff of the publication should. Nay, must. That’s what they get paid for, innit?

     

    So I read about this lawyer who ponders why people love books. The intro to his piece said, “Don’t scorn at those who read Twilight just because you’ve read Ulysses.” After I had retrieved my mind from the edges of space to which it had retreated, trying to assimilate Twilight and Ulysses in the same breath, I wondered whether I should write to Brunch. Because, as I expect and hope many of you will have noted, one does not say “scorn at”. One says “scorned”, or “heaped scorn upon”. Or “scoffed at”, which I am guessing is what was meant here, going by the general tone and content of the piece. Want a tip to remember it? “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” No “at”.

     

    Still, I thought I’d give it a rest, stop being a whiner and move on, and I turned the page. There was a media professional talking about how he had to perforce go on holidays with his parents when he was growing up. “Holidaying with parents has hardly ever been an option,” said the intro (and the copy said it too, varying the tense). When I first read the intro I thought this was a guy yearning to go on holidays with his parents and not being able to. Which is what it means, in the form it is in. But what the story says is that holidaying with his parents was not optional. This is the phrase to use when you mean that it is compulsory and there is no opting out. (Any of you remember those “optional” papers back in college?)

     

    Two of those in a row couldn’t be ignored. Here are people, educated and articulate, who are read by lots of other people who will then take these people’s words as given… This, this is why there is an onus of responsibility on publications to get it right, from facts to usage. Because people emulate, and imitate, and copy-paste. Because this is how mistakes get perpetuated.

     

    Fine, the sky won’t fall if a word is misused or a meaning is unclear. But letting something slide when you know it is wrong – that’s the first step to bypassing all rules. Even the ones you like. That way leads to anarchy.

     

  • Vidya Heble entreats readers not to beg. The question, that is

    Speaking of Which | Begging the Question

    By Vidya Heble

     

    “Begs the question” does not mean “Gives rise to the question,” which is how I see it used sometimes, much to my dismay. Begging the question is not a phrase or clause, it is a logical fallacy, and it’s been around much before any of our identifiable ancestors. It is one of the classic informal fallacies in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics. The fallacy of petitio principii, or “begging the question”, is committed “when a proposition which requires proof is assumed without proof.” “Beg the question”, simply, means “to assume the truth of the conclusion of one’s argument without bothering to prove it”.

     

    Begging the question is what one does in an argument when one already assumes what one is supposed to be proving. Or, states question itself as the answer to the question. “Why is this a popular programme? Because viewers like it.” The fact that viewers like it makes it popular, so the response to this is, “That begs the question.” Another example is, “Why does opium induce sleep? Because it has a soporific quality.”

     

    “Begs the question” does not need to have an actual question following it; it is a phrase in itself, and the “question” it refers to is already inherent in the statement being discussed. Therefore, desist from talking about begging the question, unless you know for sure that you are using it in the right context. Or, of course, if you’re involved in a philosophical-logical discussion.

     

  • It is not always enough to get facts, spelling and grammar right. You also have to remember the sub-text of what you are saying, writes Vidya Heble

    Speaking of Which | The Last Resort

    By Vidya Heble

     

    If you are someone who writes – or edits – for a living, it is not always enough to get facts, spelling and grammar right. You also have to remember the sub-text of what you are saying. I’ve seen a reporter pulled up for describing someone in their 50s as “elderly”. Of course, this was in a newsroom which was extremely, um, straitlaced, but it drove home to me the importance of implication.

     

    One such mistake that reporters often make is implying that when police teargas, lathi-charge or open fire on protesters, they are forced to do so by the unrelenting provocation of the mob. This is done, probably unwittingly, through the simple expedient of using “resorted to”. “Police resorted to a lathi-charge,” is the most common example. It must be made clear that “resorted to” is not a synonym for “carried out”. “Resorted to” means that the police, at the end of their tether and unable to quell the frenzied crowd by any other means, resorted to violence and there was no other option available.

     

    With the explosion of media, the practice of plain old reporting seems to have fallen by the wayside, but one of the tenets of straightforward reporting is that there should be no slant or opinion injected into it. Implying that the police were pressed into firing or lathi-charging as a last resort is not recommended. “Had to” is another such phrase. Using such phrases implies that there was provocation from one side and retaliation by another. Hold off doing this. The reporter’s job is to be the word-camera, and all you need to do is think about each word as you write it.

     

    If someone says it, of course they can be quoted, and the same goes for an opinion piece. In reporting, stick with the facts. The mob marched, or threw stones, the police carried out a lathi-charge, or opened fire, or water-cannoned the protesters.

     

    Here I have used the police as an example; it can well be the other way round, as in one report where I read that the crowd resorted to stone-throwing and damaged some vehicles. Beats me why it couldn’t have been just “the crowd threw stones”. (None of them, I presume, live in glass houses.)