The Golden 80s

According to the New York Public Library Writer's Guide to Style and Usage, an appositive is "a word or a phrase that identifies the noun or pronoun that immediately precedes it.".  Appositive phrases in English language explains or identifies the nouns or pronouns in a sentence. If these phrases are not essential to the meaning of the sentence, they are separated with commas.  Example: Amazon is launching Astro, its first household robot, powered by its Alexa smart home technology.  But if you look at your favourite newspapers or websites, nobody cares about these rules. Appositive phrases are aplenty, set off with an opening punctuation like comma, and not closed with the same punctuation.  "Persistent Systems founder and chairman Anand Deshpande, a newly minted Indian billionaire says being in the ultra-rich has changed nothing other than the number of people now saying that they know him," said a news story on  MoneyControl.com . The editorial desk did no...

A missing vowel, O, creates a new virus in Times of India, Bengaluru, story titled Disinfection: Businessmen in Bengaluru make killing amid scare .

I've seen several ways in which people write the word, iPad. This is but very innovative. This is from an English news channel based in Bengaluru. Another indication of murdering English on a daily basis. 

Yet another typo on LinkedIn's pages. I do notice such mistakes daily on newspapers, emails and websites. But when it is on Linkedin, I can't stop writing a blog post.  On such an topical conversation, this was pure laziness. So, there goes my first post of 2020. Let it be a nice year!

Business Standard  is a pink paper published from India. This tweet raised my eyebrows, as the word, 'Braveheart' has been the Indian media's cliche for a rape victim. I searched the major dictionries and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. There was no word called Braveheart in any of the dictionaries. At least officially! And there is no reference in the Online Etymology Dictionary . " Braveheart  may now be used allusively to encapsulate a view of Scottish nationalism maintained against English oppression," says  Encyclopedia.com There was Mel Gibson's Braveheart in 1995. I remember the hype on the glossy mags and television. I did not watch that movie. To impose a non-existing word on the media audience is a crime. 

1 I love cricket. I like to waste time by watching cricket, even though the results many not be in line with what I want or like. Indian cricket fans know that. Team India will lose when we expect them to win; the team will win when we expect them to lose. Just like the lives of millions in this "developing" country and also the "Next Big Thing" in the world, we are used to frustration. Usually, the teams had the dressing room where the team, next batsmen, coach, and the 12th man used to sit and watch the game. But, somehow T20 heralded the arrival of a new term to cricket: Dugout. On checking at M-W.com, Dugout is "either of two low shelters on either side of and facing a baseball diamond that contain the players' benches." The key thing is "baseball". Yeah, baseball. With T20, cricket is or resembles baseball. Because, here, in T20, what matters is over the top ecstasy. Whether the batsmen can hit the maximum number of balls out o...

The phrase, Elegant Variation, was coined by Henry W. Fowler in The King's English (1906). The essence of that term will help Indian writers to understand how carefully one should write.  "...The use of pronouns is itself a form of variation, designed to avoid ungainly repetition; and we are only going one step further when, instead of either the original noun or the pronoun, we use some new equivalent..." Fowler then lays down two guidelines: "...It is impossible to lay down hard and fast rules, but two general principles may be suggested: (1) Variation should take place only when there is some awkwardness, such as ambiguity or noticeable monotony, in the word avoided. (2) The substitute should be of a purely pronominal character, a substitute and nothing more; there should be no killing of two birds with one stone." Try to practice it. It is very interesting.

We, three kids, were not good in solving mathematical problems in school textbooks. There were no outside help, and  we were happily "stuck" with our inability and hereditary weakness in solving the problems. After a while, we never bothered to revisit why we were "stuck". But we never "struck" anyone. We were simply "stuck." And in the last few weeks I heard "struck" again, as the developer was finding it difficult to fix a "small" issue. So, developers will also get "stuck" somewhere. Candid admission anyway. "Struck" is the past tense and past participle of the verb Strike . As a noun, stuck meant "something causing delay or difficulty." Next time, when your tongue inserts an unnecessary "u" in before "r", just strike it off. Otherwise, you will be"stuck" like a door that got closed when the dog was half out of the door. And nobody held the door ajar for the...

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is India's official agency entrusted with the task of creating and nurturing conditions for growth of telecommunications in the country. So, why can't newspapers in India agree on using TRAI, instead of Trai? Trai suggests 20 cr fee for unified licence, screams Times of India . TRAI proposes Rs.20 crore for national level unified licence, says The Hindu newspaper. "One of the main objectives of TRAI is to provide a fair and transparent policy environment which promotes a level playing field and facilitates fair competition," says the official website. So why Trai? People can view TRAI as an acronym or an initialism. But can these media biggies tell the readers why they prefer one form or the other?

I did not have any idea about the origins of the phrase, First come, first served, until a mistake in an email I read got me thinking. The Daily Writing Tips has an excellent article on the history of the popular phrase, which is converted by net-savvy geeks to FCFS. The same geeks create the mistake, first come, first serve. To read the mistaken phrase is definitely irritating at times. So, first come, first served, and no more first come, first serve.

If you have read official documents released by the central government or the state governments in India, you will know the pain. The writing in such documents is characterised by ambiguos, lengthy, and wordy sentences. " Officialese " is the name given to such kind of writing. The same applies to legal documents also. Now, the US government has decided to do something about obscure writing. The Plain Writing Act of 2010 seeks to etsbalish that "Government documents issued to the public must be written clearly, and for other purposes." Interestingly, the act defines "plain writing" as "writing that is clear, concise, well-organized, and follows other best practices appropriate to the subject or field and intended audience." So, plain writing gets legal approval. Technical writers beware!

What is the plural form of phenomenon? School kids will tell it is phenomena. But what happened to " phenomena " in this newspaper report? Pachauri said: "Given the variations in the ocean currents, wind patterns and related sedimentation as well as other phenomenons related to the weather..." The news report also has other usage issues. "The six-member Pachauri Committee, tasked to examine the possibility of cutting a canal through land mass between Dhanuskodi and Rameshwaram,..." Tasked to? When Task is used as a a verb, 'with' follows it. It can be "tasked with" and not "tasked to". The third paragraph has a spelling mistake in "environemntally", that too on World Earth Day!

Whenever I open YouTube in Internet Explorer (IE) 8, the home page appears in the Hindi language, mixed with English. I did a bit of search on the Internet, which did not give any solutions. I am using Vista, but when I use Windows XP to open the same site, everything is fine. So when I open YouTubein IE 8, it looks like the following image: To view the pages in English, I need to change the language. For this, I scroll down the page, as shown in the following image: I will then click on the last item on the selected box. The item in Hindi means Show Languages. On clicking, I will get a list of languages as shown in the following image: I click on English UK. The site home page refreshes automatically and shows the page in the language I chose, as shown in the following image: Tip : If you have any other browser installed on your PC, open the You Tube site with it. When I open You Tube with FireFox, I do not get this error .

Jyoti Sanyal was a former assistant editor and columnist for The Statesman. His book, Indlish, is an excellent guide to how Indians should use contemporary English. The book is an essential read for those in a writing career, including technical writers and journalists. The author identifies the four "grey" areas Indians fail to rectify in their writing. He also provides examples and tips on how these gaps can be plugged. The following grey areas pinpointed by Sanyal in his book applies to technical writing as well: Syntax : A primary reason why overseas clients dub Indian technical writing as bad is the writer's abject failure to understand the English syntax. Very few has a good understanding of the sentence structure and rules that govern sentence structure. Very few spend time to learn how English is used all over the world. Most of them consider writing long sentences as equivalent to their mastery over English. Technical writers argue with editors saying that a ...

Cops relax timings for cafes, eateries , said a headline in one of the Bangalore newspapers. At first, I did not bother about the headline. A little later I wondered what exactly is the difference betweeen a cafe and an eatery. The Oxford Dictionary I have says that a cafe is a small restaurant selling light meals and drinks. In North American English, it also means a bar or nightclub. Eatery, on the other hand, is an informal expression for "a restaurant or cafe." So, why did the newspaper use this headline? The news report has another word " eating houses". A little research did not show any discerning difference between the two words. Which means this is bad sub-editing. The only explanation for the error is the need to fill the 'white space' for the two-line heading. It is a fact that the quality of English in Indian newspapers are really pathetic. While it's not my case that newspapers should follow Strunk and White, it is really sad to see lack of...

This list does not explain common idioms. Face the axe An axe to grind Achilles heel Apple of somebody’s eye – A person or thing that is loved more than others. Apple-pie (order) To make amends Up in arms – Ready to fight Back to back – In succession On the back burner Bad blood between (A) and (B) Blood and thunder – Violent and melodramatic acting in films… Blood, sweat and tears – Extremely hard work Draw blood Bank on something/somebody – Rely on Bear the brunt of – Bear fruit – to bring out a result, usually a successful one Bear on sb/something- Beat Tighten one’s belt 20. Tighten up on sth-to become more careful or strict 21. Walk a tightrope – 22. Blow one’s own trumpet – 23. To break the ice – 24. To bury the hatchet 25. To build castles in the air – 26. To take the bull by the horns – 27. Burn one’s fingers - 28. Cheek by jowl 29. Cock-and-bull story 30. To shed crocodile tears 31. To cry wolf 32. Cut short 33. Cut out for 34. Daggers drawn – Strained relations 35. Dead lette...

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Today, I had an interesting discussion with my colleague about the use of comma to separate adjectives. Finally, we decided to search the Internet for answers. This is what we got: ""When a noun is preceded by two or more adjectives that could, without affecting the meaning, be joined by and, the adjectives are normally separated by commas. But if the noun and the adjective immediately preceding it are conceived as a unit, such as little girl,' 'political science,' or 'glass ceiling,' no comma should be used." (The Chicago Manual of Style). That settled everything.

Should the first letter after a colon be capitalized or not? Is it an American usage or British usage? LanguageLog replies to the accusation that the American usage is wrong by quoting examples.

Find out the answer to the question here.