Why American writer Dinty Moore is all praise for Indian speakers and writers of English

I have been reading an interesting and highly original book (pictured) by author, editor, and writing coach Dinty Moore.

Moore writes with humour and with intelligence. Here's the first paragraph from the introduction:

"Perhaps you are standing in the bookstore, scanning this introductory chapter, wondering just what sort of book you have in hand. You are a good-looking person whose minor flaws seem to only accentuate your considerable charm. You are intelligent. And immune to flattery."

So yes, Moore writes with humour and with intelligence. But we all make mistakes and I thought Moore made one on Page 18 in a four-page essay dedicated to teaching readers how to use an "em dash". So I wrote an e-mail to him on Sunday night.

Subject: A question regarding the em dash as used in your book, "Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy"

Hello Dinty,

This is Ramesh Prabhu in Bangalore, India.

I am a good-looking person whose minor flaws seem to only accentuate my considerable charm. I am intelligent. And immune to flattery.

In other words, I have bought a copy of your book.

Now that I have got that out of the way, let's get down to the nitty-gritty.

On Page 18 of your book, in the essay regarding Cheryl Strayed's letter to you about her love affair with the em dash, you give us this example of how to use this particular punctuation mark:

I have three goals for my day—measure an "n" and an "m", memorize the width of the two letters, and look up "obsessive disorders" on Wikipedia.

My understanding is that a colon, not a dash (em or en) should be used to introduce a list. So don't you think you should have used a colon instead of the em dash in that sentence?

I have three goals for my day: measure an "n" and an "m", memorize the width of the two letters, and look up "obsessive disorders" on Wikipedia.

I am a journalist turned journalism professor. I have been teaching journalism since April 2003 at a media college in Bangalore. My students and I hope to hear from you soon.

Cheers,

Ramesh 

And here's Moore's reply: 

Subject: Re: A question regarding the em dash as used in your book, "Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy"

 

Ramesh

I think you are correct.  I also think that, in general, Indian speakers and writers of English are far more precise and correct than the British are nowadays.  And for sure, you are better at this than we Americans, who tend to be immensely sloppy, informal, and inconsistent. Thanks to you and your students for the correction.

Dinty

***

ALSO READ:

An e-mail interaction with The New York Times — In 8 minutes, a response from The New York Times to my e-mail pointing out a typo in a headline

An e-mail interaction with author Mardy Grothe —  It all depends on the telling, sure. But surely who does the telling matters?

 

All hail the Comma Queen!

When a copy editor of the Salon e-zine chats up the copy editor of New Yorker magazine who also happens to have published a book about her profession, what results is an interview that puts the spotlight on a vital job: editing.

Here is a sample Q&A: 

Q: Schools are teaching grammar a lot less and relying on technology and word processing programmes to “teach” it by default, pointing out grammar mistakes. Do you think this, not to mention texting and tweeting, will have a significant effect on the grammar and spelling of future adults? 

A: That’s not a very nice way to learn, just by having your mistakes pointed out. But there are fun ways to do it: “Schoolhouse Rock,” for instance, and pop music. Lately, Weird Al Yankovic has been singing about grammar and usage. Texting and tweeting shouldn’t really affect grammar, though spell-check programmes and autocorrect will have an effect on spelling. I believe that the only way to learn English grammar is to study a foreign language.

MARY NORRIS: COPY THAT!

Q: Your profanity chapter is full of hilarious examples of language writers are competing to get into the magazine. One piece by Ben McGrath debuted “bros before hos” in the New Yorker, creating a spelling dilemma with “hos”—hmm, I see that Webster’s gives the plural of “ho” as either “hos” or “hoes.” Where do you turn if it’s not in the dictionaries of record? 

A: When a word is not in Webster’s or Random House, I will look online. There are many dictionaries of slang, but you have to choose your source carefully. One of our sources is the New York Times, but of course it’s no good for profanity! One feels so silly looking up “jism,” say (though there are variant spellings), and even sillier querying it. You try to find a respectable source for the profanity, and it is a bit of a challenge. Rap lyrics, especially.

Read this fascinating feature in its entirety here: New Yorker copyeditor dishes on the wacky side of her (quite dignified) job: “One feels so silly looking up [profanity]” 

• ALSO READ: "Workers of the Word, Unite"

• ADDITIONAL READING: Why subs, or copy editors, are the lifeblood of a news organisation

Yes, a comma can save lives

On July 23, Twitter users were shocked to read this tweet from AP:

The Associated Press        ✔ @AP Follow

BREAKING: Dutch military plane carrying bodies from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash lands in Eindhoven.

Nine minutes later, there was a clarification:

The Associated Press        ✔ @AP Follow

CLARIFIES: Dutch military plane carrying Malaysia Airlines bodies lands in Eindhoven.

But during those nine minutes, Twitter users must have been under the impression that there had been yet another aircrash.

And, as the Bangalore-based NewsMinute portal pointed out, some of the over three million followers of AP on Twitter took notice of the error and were quick to respond:

Khang @KhangSports Follow

Commas can save lives. RT @AP: BREAKING: Dutch military plane carrying bodies from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash, lands in Eindhoven.

Read the NewsMinute post in its entirety here: "How Associated Press created a flutter by missing a comma in a tweet".

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Everything you always wanted to know about the usage of punctuation marks (but were afraid to ask)".

An ode to punctuation

From The Commits Chronicle archives: 

COMMATOSE PROSE

Ajay Kurpad (Class of 2011) thought he and the rest of the batch were losing their marbles as I took the class though the basics of punctuation. Here’s his angst-ridden “ode” to punctuation:

Forgot your punctuation? Stop hyphen-ventilating. You just have semi-colon cancer. You are not running a 100-m dash. After all, your feet are like ellipses.
If you have a period (pun intended), then you must have read the wrong Commasutra. Brackets are barricading your mind and are trying to colonise you.
People will put a question mark on your mental stability now. The apocalyptical apostrophe’s apostle is out to slash you. So don’t forget your punctuation.

• ALSO READ: "Everything you always wanted to know about the usage of punctuation marks (but were afraid to ask)" and "How good is your grammar?"

How good is your grammar?

Find out by taking these interesting and instructive grammar tests:

1. From the Daily Writing Tips blog
20 Questions

2. From the Daily Telegraph (U.K.)
Good grammar test: can you pass?

3. From GrammarBook.com
Free interactive grammar quizzes 

4. From the Staples website (a quiz recommended by Commitscion Satish Perumal, Class of 2011)
Have you got a grasp of grammar?

5. Also, Grammar Monster has dozens of tests not only for grammar but also for punctuation. Check them out here.

And while you're at it, laugh your way through "19 Jokes Only Grammar Nerds Will Understand (The difference between knowing you’re shit and knowing your shit".

• Meanwhile, I am grateful to Commitscion Supriya Srivastav (Class of 2011), for posting on my Facebook wall a link to this hilarious yet very instructive "Word Crimes" video on YouTube: 

 

So, did you learn something from watching that video? I sure hope so. :-)

ADDITIONAL READING:

• "Good grammar is important for everyone, not just journalists"

• "How to avoid being a grammar goof"

• "Bad grammar, poor punctuation: a sure recipe for disaster at your workplace"

• "Everything you always wanted to know about the usage of punctuation marks (but were afraid to ask)"

Everything you always wanted to know about how to use punctuation marks (but didn't know whom to ask)

There appears to be some confusion regarding the use of hyphens. For starters, many people are unsure about how a hyphen (-) is different from a dash (—). Next comes the question of when to employ a hyphen and when to choose a dash. (For more on dashes, read Ben Yagoda's enlightening column in The New York Times here.)

SEMI-COLONIC IRRITATION: A STILL FROM A SHORT FILM CONCEIVED AND PRODUCED BY FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF COMMITS.

Many people are also stumped by what is known as suspensive hyphenation, in which two (or more) prefixes may be linked to one word, as in this example from a recent issue of DNA:

Nilanjana Roy is a cat-, cheel-, mouse- and mongoose-whisperer and this is the animals’ story, unhampered by human interference.

Here's another example of suspensive hyphenation from a Times of India report on the release in Bengaluru of Rajinikanth's film, Lingaa:

Bengaluru, where more than 10 theatres are screening the Rajinikanth-, Sonakshi Sinha- and Anushka Shetty-starrer, has had a long-time following for Rajini dating back to the 1980s, and his fans left no stone unturned in making sure their Thalaiva's (leader's) movie opened to a record gathering in most areas where their network is strong.

Earlier this month, V.R. Narayanaswami, who writes the fortnightly "Plain Speaking" column in Mint, dedicated his piece to the use of hyphens and gave us many examples from the European Union's English style guide. The hypen may have its detractors, Narayanaswami writes, but, and I agree with him, hyphens are not only useful but also essential if we want to make our meaning clear.

When we write "small business owner", are we referring to a small person who owns a business, when we mean a person who owns a small business? In which case, we must write "small-business owner". It is only the hyphen that removes all ambiguity in this case.

So, however much some young people would like to wish the hyphen away, it is here to stay.

In Narayanaswami's column, there is a reference also to "suspensive hyphenation":

An interesting use of the hyphen, not described in grammar books, is coordinate construction. If there is a phrase such as “heat-resistant and acid-resistant” in the sentence, the first-occurring “resistance” is dropped. So we get “heat- and acid-resistant”. Similarly, we have “water- and air-borne diseases”. These are also called suspended compounds. The structure is fairly common now in business writing and technical writing. 

Read the column in its entirety here: "Euro guide to the use of hyphens". 

• Meanwhile, I am grateful to Commitscion Supriya Srivastav (Class of 2011), for posting on my Facebook wall a link to this hilarious yet very instructive "Word Crimes" video on YouTube:

So, did you learn something from watching that video? I sure hope so. :-)

ALSO READ:

• "Hyphen Anxiety" — when are words hyphenated? When are they not?

• "5 Tips to Understand Hyphenated Words"

• And while we are on the subject of punctuation marks, you may want to read up on the proper use of the colon, how to use dashes, the rules for use of ellipses, and the functions of a semicolon.

UPDATE (November 1, 2012): Mark Nichol, editor of the Daily Writing Tips blog, answers reader queries about the hyphen here.

UPDATE (November 7, 2012): Mark Nichol responds to reader queries about another troublesome punctuation mark, the comma: "Answers to Questions About Commas". Also read: "Three Common Comma Errors" and "The Rationale for the Serial Comma".

UPDATE (February 12, 2013): Read all about the usage of apostrophes in this Mint column by V.R. Narayanaswami: "Aspects of the Apostrophe".

UPDATE (March 14, 2013): In one post, everything you need to know about punctuating a sentence. Check it out here.

The problem with quotation marks...

...is that many people still don't know how to use them in a running quote (one that runs into two or more paragraphs).

Take this example from the July 1 issue of Forbes India:

Says Badri, “In the first year, in order to choose my humanity subject, I had to take an English test. All those who got good marks were allowed to choose German or other easy subjects and all those who ‘failed’ that test were forced to take English. Needless to say, I failed. I was saddled with English for two semesters. But the sad thing was I couldn’t do well in those classes either.

Here was an English teacher who knew pretty well that she had to deal with the ‘dregs’ of the society, and she hated it and made it clear in the class what she thought of us. 

I can remember only two friends for much of the first semester in Mechanical Engineering out of a class of 65 or so, because those two were the only ones who would speak to me in Tamil. Then it widened to about five friends. Normally, most freshers get a room only on the ground floor (considered to be low class!). By the end of first year, all those in the ground floor move to first or second. I was so friendless that I simply decided to stay for the second year at a stretch in the ground floor. Only in my third year did I move to the first floor.”

From that first floor at IIT Madras to Cornell in Ithaca, USA, wasn’t that difficult a transition. At Cornell, he successfully completed his doctoral work. But towards the end, he got disenchanted with the cliques and politics of the academic world and this is when a chance encounter with a researcher in England and a cricket enthusiast in Australia led to cricinfo.com.

The first three paragraphs in this excerpt from Subroto Bagchi's Zen Garden column in the magazine are made up of a long quotation from the interviewee, Badri Seshadri of New Horizon Media, a Bangalore-based company. Now, since the quote continues in the second and third paragraphs, there should be open quotation marks at the beginning of each of those paragraphs. So where are they?

I have learned, from past experience as a teacher, that there are a lot of people out there who do not know how to use quotation marks in a running quote. IT guru Subroto Bagchi may be one of them. But the journalists at the Forbes India desk should have caught this slip.

Here's the rule you should know: "When quotes run into two or more paragraphs, each new paragraph takes opening quote marks, but only the final paragraph takes closing quote marks."

When someone dies, we prefer to talk about only the good things they did

But when you are a journalist, it may be necessary to remove your blinkers, and also remove the blinkers from the eyes of the public.

Last year, in July, an icon of journalism, Walter Cronkite, died in the US. I had read only great things about him.

Now here's a wonderful columnist, Roy Peter Clark, pointing out, as a public service, Cronkite's flaws.

Do you agree with this approach? Do you like the writing?

Roy Peter Clark is the Poynter columnist whose Writing Tools blog provides intelligent and helpful advice to writers, both beginners and veterans. Read, for example, his column on the use of the semicolon, "Good semicolons make good neighbours". The article also gives you tips on the use of other punctuation marks. A must-read for Commitscions.