MxMIndia

Tag: Speaking Of Which

  • What happens when an opinionated copy editor gets onto a soapbox? You get 'Speaking of Which'. A quick roundup of the new column's highlights

    LookBack 2012: Speaking of Which

    By Vidya Heble

     

    Speaking of Which began as a vague desire to document some frequently occurring lapses that result in language becoming unclear and communication fuzzy. There was also a sense of defence against incursions on rules of grammar. Because if you throw out all the rules, you have anarchy. In language, as in life.

     

    There was always the danger of turning into a stuffed-shirt pedant, and the ever-present danger of making a mistake oneself (keeping Muphry’s Law in mind).

     

    But nothing ventured, nothing gained – and so the first column came about.

     

    To answer those who, inevitably, argued that accuracy does not matter, one had to make the case that it does matter, and why.

     

    There was a column on common confusions, an ongoing list that will appear with updates (because people keep making new mistakes!) from time to time; and one on a pet peeve, the indiscriminate use of “would” instead of “will”.

     

    A couple of other columns were on the use of suo moto (or motu, as I keep reading it – which is it?) and transitive/intransitive verbs. But one column that practically wrote itself from the pages of my daily of choice was on the McMahon Line, the India-China border which got printed throughout the report as MacMohan Line. Call it the influence of Hindi films and sloppy research – the internet will give you everything, wrong as well as right, the trick is knowing how to differentiate.

     

    And that is what it boils down to, ultimately. There are reference books and reference books (and sites). But what matters is human intelligence.

     

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

     

  • Don't be unnecessarily shameless, says Vidya Heble

    Speaking of Which | A little less shame, perhaps?

    By Vidya Heble

     

    This time we focus on the wrong use of a word – not incorrect but not quite what is intended to be meant. Chief among them is ‘shameless’, a word that I’ve noticed people using increasingly often. Shameless seems to be the default replacement word to mean anything from frank to brazen.

     

    The murderous assault in Delhi of a young woman and her companion left me drained of the will to be pedantic about word usage in the face of such far more vital issues, but duty does call.

     

    Shameless is a strong word and has a negative connotation. We usually don’t intend to imply this negative meaning when we use the word, so why don’t we take a few moments and look for words that actually mean what we intend? For instance, I unashamedly confess to being a fan of John Abraham. I might even be uninhibited when jumping with joy at the prospect of meeting him. But in neither case would I be shameless. You shouldn’t, either.

     

    Another word I’ve come across, mainly in word-portraits about some personality or the other, is ‘humble’. I can understand humble beginnings such as a handcart pusher going on to become a big businessman. But his personality remains, not humble but modest. In the Indian context modesty is practically synonymous with personal space, the invasion of which amounts to ‘outraging of modesty’. But modesty is also a character attribute, and it means something different from humility (and that is a word related to ‘humble’, in case you wondered).

     

    The big question: How do you know which word to use? How do you know there are these other words that express what you want to say? The only way to find out is to read, read, read. Not text messages but books.

     

  • Verbs have their places in black and white, not including grey areas. Vidya Heble counts the shades

    Speaking of Which | Shall We Disappear You?

    By Vidya Heble

     

    There is a venerable text by a venerable pair of birds, Wren and Martin. Those over 40 should know about it, and those under that should too, if it is still the standard for school grammar education since I was there. It is titled High School English Grammar and Composition, and it is always called the Wren & Martin, and it has been published by S Chand & Co in slightly different versions of the same utilitarian cover with the insides, as far as I can tell, unchanged.

     

    And as far as I can tell again, there isn’t any reason to change them. Grammar has not, fundamentally, changed. Yes, some words and phrases have expanded in meaning and shifted shape a little, like elastic-waisted jeans that help the wearer absorb delicious dinners without popping a button. But the essentials of grammar are still what they were. A noun is a noun, and the parts of the sentence still need to be in their places for the sentence to make sense.

     

    We may not always need to know why something is right or wrong, except when we’re explaining them to someone else. Generally when writing or editing I don’t usually need to look up points of grammar. After 25 years on the job, language generally comes naturally to one. But when I get onto the Speaking of Which soapbox, and I have to justify my pontification, that’s when a tome is useful. There is a choice of volumes – Fowler’s, Oxford Companion, Websters, a selection of Penguin titles. But to explain one particular point of grammar I had to dig out my Wren and Martin.

     

    That point of grammar is the verb – transitive versus intransitive. In grammarese, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no direct object. This is distinct from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. The verb property is called transitivity. Very broadly and a bit simply, a transitive verb is something that you do to someone else. And an intransitive verb is one that you do yourself or to yourself. You don’t have to worry about which verb is called what, although the word “trans” = “transfer” will help you remember if you want to. Far more important is to remember that an intransitive verb should not be made to do a transitive verb’s work. One instance of this is people using (or misusing) “disappear” thus. “He disappeared the file,” was one. You can’t do that. You can make the file disappear, or you can do away with the file. Or you yourself can disappear, as I wish perpetrators of these grammatical injustices would do.

     

    In English, of course, there are grey areas. It has been compared to a woman’s wardrobe in terms of its lack of logic, although these days a man’s wardrobe would compete quite satisfactorily for that. The verb “grow” used in conjunction with money is one which baffled me for a while. “Grow your money” sounded terribly wrong but then what about growing plants? There’s no one-size-fits-all rule here. Finally I decided that you should not grow inanimate objects. Grow tomatoes, yes. Grow money – nice concept but it won’t happen. You can, however, make your money or your company grow, and here’s hoping you benefit majorly from it.

     

  • It used to be suo moto. Now it seems to have turned into suo motu, which sounds wrong to Vidya Heble. Anyone there to clarify?

    Speaking of Which | So Suo Me

    By Vidya Heble

     

    Now and then I dip into other newspapers and every time I think I have indeed made the right choice with my Hindustan Times subscription. It’s not perfect, but no newspaper can be (ok maybe the New York Times but we don’t know for sure, do we?) and HT is probably as good as it can get. Mistakes are few and far between, and often excusable as what I call “genuine typos”.

     

    Now and then HT surprises one with a zinger of the nice kind, such as the other day when they described an upscale neighbourhood as “tony”. An unusual word to use but I’m glad they did; people who don’t know what it means will either get the drift, or (one hopes) look it up and thus be educated as well as edified.

     

    Then I turned a page.

     

    In a report about something to do with courts, there was the phrase “suo motto”. Even typing it makes me laugh; it evoked a hearty chuckle when I read it. Actually the phrase suo moto is one of the topics on the Speaking of Which list, because it usually gets printed as “suo motu”, which may be amusing to those of us who know Hindi, but is also incorrect. That is, as far as I know. Apparently a Wikipedia entry gives the definition for “suo motu”, but the only instances I can find of its use are on sub-continent news sites. I still think suo moto – which exists in Latin definition lists – is the right phrase, and anyone who can back it up with a proper Latin dictionary or the equivalent will get a box of chocolates with no compulsion to share it with me.

     

    Literally translated, suo moto means “on its own motion.” The term generally refers to a situation wherein a judge acts without request by either party to the action before the court. Perhaps if the judge made a quip while doing so, it could well be suo motto.

     

  • If it's worth printing, it's worth getting it right. Especially if it's printed on the front page, says Vidya Heble

    Speaking of Which | Drawing the Line

    If I could manage without reading any newspapers at all, I would happily pick that option. But I can’t yet afford to live in a cocoon and, let’s face it, newspapers do give us the lowdown on the news that we may have sampled on the internet the previous day. I subscribe to the best option around, the Hindustan Times, and sometimes I browse other newspapers.

     

    But I seriously wonder if I can take it much longer. There has recently been a steady stream of language-related atrocities, and this is in the very limited news reading that I do. It started with Mumbai Mirror which reported various details surrounding the death of Asha Bhosle’s daughter. It also mentioned Ashaji’s sister “Lala” Mangeshkar. On the front page. Once I had stopped groaning I realized that it isn’t totally wrong, as someone in my family pointed out – she does sing “La la la la la…”

     

    But that one could have been what we call a “genuine typo”. Then came a report in Hindustan Times about the kidnapping of a boy, where the ransom note was written on a piece of “fullscape” paper. This was obvious an error of ignorance, because the term is actually “foolscap”, referring to the size of the typical “long book” that students use. I suppose a simple search for the term (even the wrong term) coupled with “paper size” would have cleared it up. That is, if the reporter or the sub-editor wanted to ensure it was correct. “Fullscape” is an unusual word. Why not look it up to make sure it’s correct?

     

    More serious than that, a few days later in HT, was a report blurbed on the front page and carried in full on an inside page, which left me much alarmed. It talked about the India-China border, referring to it all along as the “MacMohan Line”. (Mac Mohan is a Hindi film villain-sidekick actor!) I find it really hard to believe that no one, at all, on the desk and especially on the front page, knew that it is the McMahon Line. All right, assuming that the average age on the average desk is 24 and that the average range of knowledge considers the 1980s as ‘history’, still… what about looking it up? If they cared enough to look it up. Or cared at all.

     

    Why care? Why do a job well when you can get away with doing it slipshod? Because we are in the profession of disseminating information, that’s why. We should not be allowed to get away with doing it badly. Our job is not only to entertain (did I hear a gasp?) but chiefly to inform. And information needs to be correct. In my hierarchy of getting things right, facts are at the top. Then comes spelling and grammar. The McMahon boo-boo was an error of both fact and spelling. I don’t expect journalists to know everything. But I do expect them to look it up. In an era when search and reference tools are handier and more accessible than I have ever known them to be, there is no excuse for getting it wrong, at least on the front page. Besides, how else are we ourselves to learn anything new if we don’t find out?

     

    This is not a case for perfection. In a business where everything moves fast, and is getting increasingly so with stepped-up technology by the day, it’s not possible to dot every i and cross every t. But “MacMohan Line” is beyond the pale. It was considered important enough for the front page. It is very much an important fact (the India-China border, after all). Was it not important enough to get it right?

     

    PS: In despair, I turned to food. Reading about it, that is. BBC Good Food has been my refuge from the world, and I enjoy sinking into the luscious photographs and excellently presented recipes and articles. But the October issue brought great disappointment. For one, the brand Woh Hup was spelled Who Hup. Yes, the electronic spell checker “corrects” it, though the human eye should have been on the lookout for this particular word. Leaving that behind, later in the same issue I also came across “exhorbitantly” – a damning error if there was any. This is understandable and even forgivable if it appears in a high-frequency publication such as a daily, where a spell-check is sometimes overlooked in the hurry of meeting the daily deadline. But Good Food is a monthly and there is enough time to check everything. I know, I’ve worked in one and done it. Good Food is a publication of quality, not a two-bit magazine from which nothing great can be expected. It’s priced high enough that everything should be obsessively checked before it goes to print. And remember, a spell-check is only as good as the person carrying it out.

     

  • 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.

     

  • There are those who argue that accurate grammar and spelling doesn’t matter as long as the message gets through. Vidya Heble begs to differ

    Speaking of Which: Why words matter. Why everything matters

    By Vidya Heble

     

    I had a little run-in on a discussion board recently with someone who argued fiercely that attention to grammar and accurate language should stop when the workday stops. Sure, she has a point, though I don’t agree with it. In any case, it’s one that was valid some – many – years ago, when our work lives and our non-work lives were demarcated fairly clearly. We swiped out or signed out and went home, and lived our other lives. Those of us who had a telephone may have had some seepage of work into their personal lives but if that happened it was an emergency; it was not expected and certainly not taken for granted.

     

    Nowadays, work and life are one and the same thing, as the constant tap-tapping on diminutive keyboards all around us demonstrates. I’ve staunchly resisted getting a smartphone because I don’t want to be working 24/7. Though I work primarily from home, I want to be able to switch off when required, and not take my email with me to the vegetable market.

     

    But for many, it’s taken for granted that even if they are with their immediate family or close friends at a personal event late at night, an email can be read and answered, a work call can be made. It’s insane. Work is almost never switched off. It is also the reason one cannot switch off grammar and spelling, either. There is no excuse for using language badly, but at least a case can be made for informal usage, shortcut spellings specially in the age of SMS, and a disregard for grammar that, when done well, can be charming (for example, the deliberate muffing of the language on icanhascheezburger.com).  But that’s when you’re at play, not at work.

     

    Today, there is practically no demarcation between work and play. We write emails side by side with Facebook posts. Breaking the rules in one seeps through into the other, hence it’s better to follow the rules for both. For those who communicate, communicating well needs to become second nature.

     

    But how much does grammar and spelling matter? Let’s find out. Back when Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize, the Sunday edition of a certain publication carried comprehensive coverage of her and her family, mainly her mother Mary Roy who was already a very well-known person in a different sphere. The story on Mary Roy was written by someone based in a part of India where, as I learnt later, they pronounce “Marie” as “Mary”. (How they pronounce Mary, I have no idea.) So the publication’s correspondent wrote the whole story about “Marie Roy”, and because she was senior enough, no one questioned it. And so it was that this Sunday publication was probably the only one in the country which talked about Arundhati Roy’s mother “Marie” Roy. Incidentally, that correspondent was the same person who had the argument with me (and ended it by unfriending me on Facebook).

     

    Spelling may not matter to some… but what if you are the one whose name is misspelt? What if the name you misspelt belongs to a future boss of yours?

     

    That’s why it matters. Try to get it right. Because someone, somewhere will notice.

     

    PS: On a Singapore Airlines flight I read an article on tea in their inflight magazine Silver Kris. The brand of tea Twinings was spelt “Twinnings”, a surprising gaffe for a magazine of that quality. I happened to know the writer of the article and later asked her how the mistake had happened. “Oh but that’s the spelling,” she said. “Haven’t you seen the brand in the supermarket?” I asked her. “Of course I have,” she said, “that’s the name, Twinnings.” Lesson: You can wave the brand name under the writer’s nose but you still can’t make them spell it right if they don’t want to.

     

    ‘Speaking of which’ is a new fortnighly series 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.

     

  • 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”?