MxMIndia

Tag: spelling

  • 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.

     

  • 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”?