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...

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!

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.

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!

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...

I feel like thrashing my desktop or banging my head against the wall on seeing the following words in user documents and emails: On approval or once approved Bolded Revert back Impacted The problem with the first word is if the user has to do an action after a particular step or authorisation, I can write, "After xyz task, ...". Why should the word "once" be used? In the printing industry, the word "bold" stands for "boldface". It is a character or type set in boldface. According to a printing glossary , "Bold is a type that appears darker than the next type of the same typeface." The adjectives are bolder and boldest, and not bolded . Technical writers can use make bold or set to bold instead of bolded that gives a puking sensation . The same applies to impacted . Even though, this is a popular , I will substitute it with another word or rewrite the sentence. I do not know who discovered the expression "revert back" as...

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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.

power trip (n) Slang - An action undertaken chiefly for the gratification associated with the exercise of power over another or others. Grok: verb (used with object) 1. to understand thoroughly and intuitively. –verb (used without object) 2. to communicate sympathetically.( Dictionary.com ) deracination (n) deracinate (v): Uprooted, alienated from the native culture or environemnt. Along with Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini, the Haiti-born Edwidge Danticat and Junot Diaz from the Dominican Republic, Lahiri swells a tide of new fictional voices: immigrants, who write about displacement and deracination . ( The Independent ) Doodad: Ornamemtal attachment. Tours have become a way to market the artist as a brand, with the fan clubs, limited-edition doodads , and other profitable products and services that come with the territory. To bandy words: A phrase meaning to argue persistently. Silver bullet (phrase): Direct and effortless solution to a problem. garboil (noun): Confusion; turmoil....