Top 10 reasons why EDITING is cool

(10) It's like solving a puzzle.

(9)  You find a whole world of other people who go crazy over the "10 items or less" sign in the grocery store. (Or, as one new editor put it, "I can constructively satisfy my obsessive-compulsive anal-retentive
tendencies and get paid for it.")

(8)  Your job changes constantly; you're never bored.

(7)  You become a more interesting person. You can talk about Arafat, Albright, Agassi or Aguilera and sound like you know what you're talking about — because you do.

(6)  You have responsibility and power. You decide how readers will perceive the news, how they'll perceive the world.

(5)  Catching a dumb mistake before readers see it is a rush. Helping someone make a story better is the best drug there is.(Or, as one person wrote, "It's as close as an English major can come to being a doctor, or God.")

(4) Newspapers never ask writers to edit, but they love it if editors write.

(3)  You could be the world's best quiz show contestant because you're a dictionary of useless information.

(2)  You can move anywhere and find a job.

(1)  You never have to wear decent clothes.

• Compiled by Jane Harrigan, University of New Hampshire (Courtesy The American Copy Editors' Society)

• Also read: Why subs, or copy editors, are the lifeblood of a news organisation.

Stephen King on what writing is about

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, or making friends.

In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

Some of this book — perhaps too much — has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it — and perhaps the best of it — is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free, so drink.

Drink and be filled up.

And where do you find these pearls of wisdom? At the end of the master storyteller's brilliant book, On Writing.

Actually there's more to the book.

After the conclusion comes a long passage. King urges the reader "to look at it closely before going on to the edited version".

The edited version has notes on the changes he has made. Isn't that a huge learning for aspiring writers?

• Also read: More gems from On Writing.

• UPDATE (March 18, 2013): To understand why Stephen King says the adverb is not your friend, read this post by my favourite blogger: "Stephen King on Simplicity of Style".

• UPDATE (June 21, 2013): Journalist and editor Eric Olsen discusses On Writing as well as four other books on the craft of writing: "Eric Olsen's recommendations".  

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Stephen King’s 'Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully — in Ten Minutes' "

Get rid of clutter if you want people to read what you have written

V.R. Narayanaswami

And it is really not that difficult to eliminate clutter in your writing, as V.R. Narayanaswami helpfully explains in his regular column in Mint.

Wordiness is the bane of good writing, he advises. And he continues:

Many words are unnecessarily burdened with tags that do not add to meaning. “Advance forward” is a simple example. My list of words like “added bonus”, “final outcome”, “clearly evident”, “future potential”, “revert back” and “end result” runs to four pages.

There are some useful tips for novice writers, especially for those young people who hope to have a media career (when you think about it, there are very few professionals today who do not have to do any writing):

There are two kinds of lapses in writing: turbidity and turgidity.

Turbid means thick, muddy or cloudy. Your writing becomes turbid when you use inappropriate words and tangled structure.

Turgidity results when the writer tries to impress with pompous language rather than to convey meaning. Such writing makes liberal use of clichés and buzz words.

Read the column in its entirety here: Getting rid of clutter in writing. And here's another illuminating piece by Narayanaswami on you should tailor the content of your message to your reader: Why writing should be about 'you'.

Also read: 

• Top 5 Tips to Cut the Clutter (with examples)
• Ten Quick Tips to Improve Your Writing

Beware! Punster at large!

FAHAD SAMAR

Contrary to what many believe, humour writing is possibly the most difficult kind of writing. And when a comic piece depends largely on puns, widely considered the lowest form of wit, the writer better be really good. He better be someone like Fahad Samar, the filmmaker and columnist.

Take Fahad's recent column in the Indian Express. Titled "Heat and Dustoor" — a dead giveaway, if ever there was one — the piece expounds on an evening the author spent with other media professionals compiling a list of “Parsi films that never made it to the silver screen”.

Here are some gems (you may have to know something about Parsis and Parsi customs to be able to appreciate a few of the titles):

• Moby Dikra
• The Towering Inferno of Silence
• Indiana Jones and the Fire Temple of Doom

 And my personal favourites:

• Where Vultures Dare
• Murder by Dikri

Read the column in its entirety here.

• Also read Fahad's "interview" conducted "via satellite" with Julian Assange of Wikileaks in the aftermath of the Mayawati controversy: "India's Most Detestable".

What our newspapers can learn from The New York Times

How often do we find grammatically incorrect sentences, misspelled words, and wrongly used punctuation marks in our newspapers?

How often do we readers bother to complain?

And how often do our newspapers respond to readers' complaints?

Perhaps our dailies should study how seriously The New York Times, one of the world's greatest newspapers, views errors. And, perhaps, we readers should also emulate NYT readers and take our newspapers to task when necessary.

These thoughts came to mind on reading a recent "After Deadline" blog post on the NYT website by Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, who is also in charge of the newspaper's style manual. Titled The Reader's Lament and based on a memo Corbett received from a colleague who oversees the NYT's copy desks, this post is, from an Indian newspaper's viewpoint, an extraordinary mea culpa.

Look at the opening salvo:

Times readers expect nothing but the best in our writing and editing. Too often, they’re disappointed.

We then get to sample some complaints from irate readers:

“As a 35-year subscriber to The Times, I continue to be disappointed in the number of typos that have become chronic and, sorry to say, expected on a daily basis,” one reader wrote recently. “Where are the proofreaders and editors? Where are the standards for punctuation and grammar? The Times used to be the gold standard.”

The memo continues with a plausible explanation for the increase in errors:

This era of news publishing has put a greater emphasis on speed, across multiple formats and platforms. Thanks to blogging and continuous updates, more people in the newsroom find themselves in the role of publishing live material. The same forces have increased the workload and distractions faced by reporters, backfield editors, copy editors and producers.

There is also an explanation of the newspaper's working guidelines:

Our policy is for every article to get at least two reads, preferably one of them by an experienced copy editor, before publication. And then you should check your work again, or have someone else check it.

The memo then provides "some proofreading tips culled from years of journalism tip sheets" and offers this succinct conclusion:

Last of all, think of our readers — and care what they think of us.

Both journalists and media students (and, of course, newspaper readers) will benefit greatly from reading this post in its entirety: "The Reader's Lament".

• Thank you, Rohita Rambabu, for alerting me to this post.

• "After Deadline" offers a highly instructive contemplation of issues regarding "grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times". Want to know when to use "who" and when to use "whom"? Check out "Too Many Whoms." Want to be cheered by some sparkling writing? Read "Bright Passages". Unsure of when to use commas? This post has some helpful advice: "Commas? Sure, throw a few in".

20 questions you must ask yourself before you hit the "Send" button

"The spelling in e-mail is rotten, the grammar is atrocious, the punctuation — don't ask. No wonder people who love language are wringing their hands and saying the computer has been a disaster for the written word."

Truer words were never spoken.

To help us fix our e-mail bloopers, language mavens Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman, whose quote appears above, wrote a book which was published as far back as — would you believe it? — 2003. Eight years on, the points made in You Send Me: Getting It Right When You Write Online are still valid.

CAN YOU FIGURE OUT WHICH PUNCTUATION MARKS ARE MISSING?

Now, to test your e-mail IQ, Grammarphobia.com has put together 20 questions, based on O'Conner and Kellerman's book, that you should ask yourself before you hit "Send". All 20 questions — and explanations — are available here. The ones I found particularly helpful are given below:

1. Is the subject line helpful?

2. Is the language clear?

3. Did you say what you're replying to?

4. Did you break for paragraphs?

5. Did you read it again?

6. Did you check the grammar, spelling, and punctuation?

Simple, practical, and easy-to-apply advice. Why didn't we think of it ourselves?

• Patricia T. O'Conner has also written a bestselling grammar book, Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English. This book, as well as You Send Me, is available on Flipkart.

• Illustration courtesy: HootSuite. 

UPDATE (January 6, 2014): "Use lowercase type with capitals where capitals are called for. Lowercase is easier to read than all caps, but don’t go to extremes and omit capitals altogether. Friends may not mind, but a business colleague may interpret lack of capitalisation as evidence of lack of education or energy." — Some helpful advice from Maeve Maddox on the excellent Daily Writing Tips blog. Read the post in its entirety here: "E-mail Matters".

• ALSO READ: "Want To Be Taken Seriously? Become a Better Writer" 

UPDATE (January 9, 2014):  Can spelling mistakes and bad e-mail etiquette help you get ahead? Yes, says Kevin Roose, in a column he wrote on his blog (and which I spotted when I logged on to my LinkedIn account today). Roose uses the example of the e-mail sent to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg by Snapchat's Evan Spiegel to elaborate on the subject. Read his post here: "How Spelling Mistakes and Bad E-mail Etiquette Can Help You Get Ahead".

Meet ad executive Swapan Seth, the man who buys a book every day

SWAPAN SETH

Swapan Seth is a man after my own heart.

The chief executive of Equus, the ad agency, and author of This Is All I Have to Say writes in the latest issue of Businessworld that he buys a book every day. "I buy most of my books online," Seth writes. "From Amazon, and now Flipkart."

What does he read?

Everything. ... I also speed read. That allows me to wrap up books pretty fast. And I read three of them simultaneously. Currently, I am reading about smiles, shoes and one book on the state of America. I also read on the strangest of topics — pineapples, salt, wine and wisdom. Even pronouns. And genes.

The strange thing is that Seth came to books late:

For most part of my life, I was just not a book person. The only thing I would read about was the Royal Family of England. So I would go to the British Council and read whatever there was to know about them. To that end, I know more about Queen Elizabeth than, perhaps, Prince Charles does.

It was only at age 33, Seth writes, when he visited a friend at home, a friend whose house was just filled with books, that he lost his heart to books:

I was mesmerised. [Books] served as tables. They worked as stools. The smell of paper was captivating. I lost my heart to books courtesy [Kaustav Neogi] and his infinitely inspiring home. All that I have rigorously read has been read over this past decade.

Seth has his quirks. For instance, he says he does not read fiction. He also "stays away from Indian authors as far as possible", only reading M.J. Akbar and Tarun Tejpal because "they both make me feel like a worm. And I like that". And Seth never reads in bed (one of my favourite places to read).

But for all that Swapan Seth is a man to admire and a role model for many youngsters who have not yet learned to appreciate the uncountable benefits of reading. The message to be taken to heart here, perhaps, from a man after my own heart is that it is never too late to develop an interest in reading.

• Photo courtesy: Businessworld

• Also read: "Why you must read".

• ADDITIONAL READING: "In one year she succeeded in reading one book from every country in the world". 

• UPDATE (May 14, 2013): Yesterday Flipkart delivered a copy of Swapan Seth's book, This Is All I Have to Say. It will be placed in the Commits library ASAP.

What does a production designer do?

WASIQ KHAN

If he's Wasiq Khan, he pulls off the improbable, writes Sunaina Kumar in the latest Tehelka.

And how does he do that?

In Dabbang, it was Wasiq Khan who was responsible for "the sepia tints, the rustic colours and the stylised yet authentic sets of the film". In Anurag Kashyap’s That Girl in Yellow Boots, for which he had only two days to prepare, Khan set up "a cramped apartment with peeling walls, a crummy massage parlour, and a BEST bus".

He got his start in production design with Kashyap’s short film Last Train to Mahakali and though he has had some stupendous successes in commercial Hindi cinema, his speciality, he says, is in conjuring up the grime and sweat of reality.

“It is certainly the work I find most challenging and rewarding. It is also the toughest to shoot,” he says. He gives examples from Aamir and Black Friday. In Aamir "there was a scene where Rajeev Khandelwal had to enter a filthy slum toilet. He puked on the sets and I had to reassure him that this is only a set and nothing is real. In Black Friday, for the bomb blast sequence, instead of junior artists, I got disfigured beggars from Haji Ali, and got them fitted with artificial limbs for the before-and-after scenes.”

Curiously, Wasiq Khan says he never uses design software for his work, so he sketches every frame by hand. For Dabbang, he says, he created more than a hundred sketches.

•  Read the article in its entirety here: "My fake slum toilet made people puke".

• Also read: "Dabbang — Plenty of bang for your buck".

• Photo: Courtesy Tehelka

Tell me, please: What role has reading played in your life?

Dr. Mardy Grothe is a phenomenon. A psychologist by training, he is an author and, as his website puts it, an engaging and entertaining speaker who gives scores of seminars every year to CEO groups that are part of an international network known as The Executive Committee (TEC).

I connected with him last April after reading his book Viva La Repartee, subtitled "Clever comebacks and witty retorts from history's great wits and wordsmiths". We had an engaging, entertaining, and enlightening e-mail conversation, which later formed the basis of a Reading Room post: "It all depends on the telling, sure. But surely who does the telling matters?"

Soon afterwards, Dr. Grothe added my name to his mailing list — now every Saturday I receive an e-mail from the good doctor with the subject line "Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week".

When I checked my e-mail this morning, this was waiting for me in my in-box:

"WHAT ROLE HAS READING PLAYED IN YOUR LIFE?"

DR. MARDY GROTHE

When I was a young boy growing up in North Dakota [USA], I took to reading very early, and my mother, an eighth-grade graduate and an avid reader, did everything she could to encourage me. When the library bookmobile made its weekly visit to our small town, mom always came home with an armful of books. I would quickly make my way through the ones she chose for me, and then move on to the ones she selected for herself. I'll always be grateful for her role in establishing what has become one of my greatest joys.

The quotations below are a testament to the importance of reading, especially when it is developed at an early age. No matter what your age, though, reading is one of the keys to a meaningful life. Over the years, I have collected well over a hundred quotations on the value or importance of reading. This week, I feature a dozen of my favourite observations on the subject:

      "Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life."
             Mortimer J. Adler

  "The reading of all good books is like conversation
   with the finest men of the past centuries."
         Rene Descartes

      "Who would call a day spent reading a good day?
       But a life spent reading — that is a good life."
             Annie Dillard

  "There is creative reading as well as creative writing."
         Ralph Waldo Emerson

      "My early and invincible love of reading
       I would not exchange for all the riches of India."
             Edward Gibbon

  "To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him, and travel in his company."
         Andre Gide

      "To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all of the miseries of life."
             W. Somerset Maugham

  "No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting."
         Mary Wortley Montagu

      "I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage."
             Charles de Montesquieu

  "Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head
   instead of with one's own."
         Arthur Schopenhauer

      "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."
             Richard Steele

  "How many a man has dated a new era in his life
   from the reading of a book!"
         Henry David Thoreau

Thank you, Dr. Mardy, for renewing my faith in the belief that you are what you read.

Also read:

• Why you must read

• David Ogilvy on why reading is important

• If you don't read, you can't write

• The amazing books that made me fall in love with journalism all over again - 1

• The amazing books that made me fall in love with journalism all over again - 2

• What to read

• If you're a book-lover...

• (March 6, 2011) Commitscion Padmini Nandy Mazumder, Class of 2011, shared this link on her Facebook wall: "Date a girl who reads". It is a beautifully articulated argument in favour of reading. So read it. Please.

Mistakes that annoy readers

Among other things:

I think my favourite correction from the past 12 months apologised for the paper praising a whisky as "a genuine classic which never fails to disappoint" — so wrong it looks right.

This excerpt from a column written by the Readers' Editor of the London Observer is just a sampler of what astute readers of the newspaper have pointed out in the past year. To find out what really annoys readers, go to "Observer readers feel passionately that we should always get the story right".

• As far as I know, The Hindu is the only newspaper in India that has a Readers' Editor.

• Also read: "Apologising to readers".