What impression do you create when you use "SMS lingo"?

Here are snatches from a conversation thread I was privileged to read on Facebook some time ago (actually you can see similar posts and comments written in similar inelegant language on Facebook — and on Twitter — every day):

cos thedy r idiot

idiots

xctly..........

who is sayng xctly! som1 coming frm d same list..

What balderdash is this?

I have never felt the need to use so-called SMS lingo... not even when I am writing an SMS (why do you think our mobiles come with a T9, or dictionary, feature?). For one, I am never so pressed for time that I cannot give some thought to articulating my thoughts. And second, I get the heebie-jeebies when I have to read an illiterate text message or Facebook post or comment.

That is why I was pleased to see a short piece titled "Inelegant language — illiterate impression" by Srijana Mitra Das on the the edit page of The Times of India yesterday. "A clear connection," Mitra Das writes, "certainly exists between poor vocabulary used in text messaging and poor linguistic skills overall — not to mention a poor impression accompanying messages from such writers."

If these people do not even have time to spell words correctly, argues Mitra Das, if they are so "terrifically busy", how will they ever make time for books? "Obviously, their grammatical growth and literary vibrancy will be stunted," she says.

And then she delivers the coup de grâce:

Texts that say "hv snt rpt" instead of "I have sent you my report" make you think of someone coming to work wearing crumpled clothes and a bad attitude — sloppy, unconcerned.... Even between friends, poorly worded texts — "hw abt tht flm" — don't sound cool. They sound illiterate.

My sentiments exactly.

PS: My tolerance levels for illiterate posts on Facebook are dangerously low nowadays. So low that I have begun unsubscribing from activity stories, comments and likes, and even status updates of people whose inelegant language drives me nuts. Does that make me a bad person?

A marketing whiz and the lessons she learned from journalism

Good journalists make good media professionals. Meaning, if they want to, they can do well in most other jobs in the media industry be it PR (as many of my former colleagues have proved), marketing, advertising... even teaching. :-)

That is what I believe. And that is what I tell every new batch of students at Commits.

NANCY FRIEDMAN

Now here's a former journalist turned marketing whiz reinforcing my belief that journalism training and experience can be a great asset in other media fields. Nancy Friedman, who styles herself as Chief Wordworker at Wordworking, an unusual communications company in California, says she has been able to apply to marketing some of the lessons she learned from journalism and she explains them in detail on her blog, Fritinancy.

Here are the 10 points she discusses:

1. Get to the point.
2. Take notes.
3. Ask and anticipate questions.
4. Spell the names right.
5. Nouns and verbs are your best friends.
6. Hello sweetheart, get me rewrite.
7. Omit needless words.
8. Grab attention with a great headline.
9. If you make a mistake, issue a correction.
10. There's no writer's block on deadline.

To let you revel in the strength of Friedman's argument — and to give you a flavour of her uncluttered, persuasive writing style — let me reproduce what she has to say about her first point, "Get to the point".

All journalists learn the inverted pyramid format: putting the most important news in the first paragraph, or lead, and the least newsworthy information at the end. Readers of ads, web content, and white papers are no different. Give them the information they need up front; don't waste time with throat-clearing and other verbal filigrees.

And because I really like what she has to say about Point No. 3, let me give that to you as well:

Ask and anticipate questions. When you're digging for information, there are no better digging tools than the five W's — who, what, when, where, why — plus H for how. I use them all the time when I'm interviewing clients. Who are your competitors? What are your products? When do you expect to launch? Where are your target markets? Why are you in business? How do you expect to achieve your goals? And like the journalist I once was, I'm ready with follow-up questions when I get the answers.

Friedman elaborates on the other points just as brilliantly. Read her column in its entirety here: "What Journalism Taught Me".

• Also visit Nancy Friedman's Wordworking website here (Slogan: "Announce. Convince. Describe. Define. Celebrate. Sell. Tell your story.") and learn how she helps companies tell their story.

Imagine — NDTV does not know the difference between "byte" and "bite"

For ten years I have been telling my students at Commits that a "quote" on television is referred to as a "sound bite" or "bite". But I have noticed many journalists — both print and television — writing it as "byte".

A few months ago I sent an email about "bite vs bite" to CNN-IBN editor-in-chief Rajdeep Sardesai and he replied, "It should be sound bite. But you are right, several of us, myself included, use sound byte. Am not sure why."

Now here's a dictionary definition of sound bite: 

noun

a brief, striking remark or statement excerpted from an audiotape or videotape for insertion in a broadcast news story.

And this is what byte means:

noun Computers 

1. adjacent bits, usually eight, processed by a computer as a unit. 

2. the combination of bits used to represent a particular letter, number, or special character.

So how did NDTV air this graphic today with "BYTE of the DAY" leaping out at you from the screen?

IT'S STRANGE THAT NDTV DOESN'T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "BYTE" AND "BITE".

I am indebted to Commitscion Dipankar Paul (Class of 2009) for sending me this image via e-mail with the subject line: "What do you think of this?"

Subsequently I wrote to the NDTV bureau chief in Bangalore, Darius Taraporvala; the news editor of CNN-IBN in New Delhi, Dipika Kaura; and also Imran Qureshi, the Bangalore bureau chief of Aaj Tak and Headlines Today to ask about the house style rule on byte vs bite.

Here is the relevant sentence from Taraporvala's e-mail to me:

To me 'byte' is computer terminology, and 'soundbite' refers to the reactions we get in the field.

This is what Kaura had to say in her e-mail:

Should be bite — that’s how the Oxford dictionary defines it. But it's more a matter of nomenclature. We’ve shifted to SOT — Sound on Tape. That at least is clearly defined.

Imran Qureshi also wrote to say that it should be "bite" and not "byte".

Byte is the language of computers.

I'm glad that's been sorted out. But has it? Watch television news closely and let me know.

When you're sickened by office politics...

...often the first thing you want to do is quit your job.

But you may want to do a rethink after reading what Tavishi Paitandy Rastogi has to say in Brunch, the Hindustan Times weekend magazine. "Don't quit! Just play the game" is her advice. And she explains how to do exactly that by outlining eight simple points with the help of corporate experts. Here are their tips:

1. Understand your surroundings
2. Keep your records straight
3. Play on the front foot
4. Keep up the good humour
5. Don't be part of a clique
6. Confront and communicate
7. No blame game
8. Your boss is no fool

Not surprisingly, the best advice comes from a journalist, Shalini Singh, who elaborates on Point No. 6:

Clear communication always cuts across office politics. Be transparent and back your arguments with solid facts. “Be polite, persuasive and firmly assertive when it comes to fighting for a ‘cause’. Also, if you need to clear misgivings, it is always advisable to confront the person one-on-one instead of sneaking to a senior. It bonds the team wonderfully,” says journalist Shalini Singh.

Read the article in its entirety here.

• By the way, Brunch is by far the best Sunday publication offered by any newspaper in the country. It is superbly edited, it is full of ideas, and it is beautifully designed. Hindustan Times does not have an edition in Bangalore, but I get to read Brunch every week only because it is supplied with Mint, and I'm grateful for that.

Why I cried when reading "The Help"

I can't remember the last time a book made me cry.

Last Friday, I was reading The Help on my Kindle Fire on the Volvo bus to work. I had been doing this for the better part of a week. And I was on the last couple of chapters.

Reading this tale of the segregation era in America — when "coloured" people were considered "separate but equal" and treated, especially in the South, worse than animals — had already had a big emotional impact on me.

And I had also been struck by the originality of the writing. Kathryn Stockett tells us the story in three distinctive voices: there is Aibileen, a "coloured" maid; Minny, her best friend and fellow maid; and Skeeter, a young — white — woman who has a worldview different from that of her peers.

KATHRYN STOCKETT

On Friday, in the bus that morning, I came to a particularly moving passage.

And the floodgates just opened up.

I was not shedding tears of sadness, though; rather, my eyes welled up because I had become so involved in the book that I was able to share the characters' moment of triumph at that point in the story. It felt so real to me.

At the end of this exceptional and uplifting tale (the movie version is a hit, too), I could not help thinking to myself again: This is Kathryn Stockett's debut novel? What will she do for an encore?

UPLIFTING EXPERIENCE: A STILL FROM THE MOVIE VERSION, AND, RIGHT, OCTAVIA SPENCER ACCEPTING HER OSCAR FOR BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN L.A. YESTERDAY.

10 quotations from writers and editors on the importance of editing (or revision)

You may be a great writer, but you still need a good editor. That is what I believe as an editor with 30 years of experience. And that is the belief of the best writers and editors, too.

Here are 10 quotations from writers and editors that underscore the importance of editing (or revision).

[I'm greatly obliged to Dr Mardy Grothe for this list.]

Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head
   and then you're a writer.
But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth,
   without pity, and destroy most of it.
         Colette

Cut out all those exclamation marks.
An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.
         F. Scott Fitzgerald

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers:
     when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.
         Elmore Leonard

 A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
         Marianne Moore

Editing is the same as quarreling with writers — same thing exactly.
         Harold Ross

In composing, as a general rule, run a pen through every other word
     you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give your style.
         Sydney Smith

It is with words as with sunbeams —
      the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
         Robert Southey

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise.
 A sentence should contain no unnecessary words,
    a paragraph no unnecessary sentences,
    for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines
    and a machine no unnecessary parts.
         William Strunk, Jr.

Writing is not like painting where you add.
It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees.
Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove,
    you eliminate in order to make the work visible.
Even those pages you remove somehow remain.
         Elie Wiesel

The very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write
   has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be
   the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet
   have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.
         Thomas Wolfe

My favourites? Fitzgerald's quote on the unnecessary use of exclamation marks and the one by Elmore Leonard which says so much (without saying as much) on why everything we write must be written keeping our audience in mind.

Also read:

• "Why subs, or copy editors, are the lifeblood of a news organisation"

• "What it means to be a newspaper sub"

• ADDITIONAL READING: "10 Things to Look Out for when Line Editing"

"Wha-aaat? You have FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY-SEVEN unread E-MAILS in your INBOX!"

That was my cry of astonishment — and anguish — yesterday when one of my students came into my cabin with her laptop to show me her inbox and to explain why she had not seen an important e-mail I had sent her three weeks ago.

Once I had taken a look at the staggering number of unread e-mails, she did not have to offer any explanation.

I know many people like her. The philosophy at work here seems to be, "We'll get to it later." But before these people know it, another dozen or more e-mails have arrived, and that all-important e-mail has been pushed to the next "page".

Clearly, this is a philosophy that does not work.

How many of you have tons of unread e-mails? Is it really that difficult to maintain a clean inbox?

I have two primary e-mail addresses. Here's a screenshot of my Gmail inbox:

Now here's a screenshot of my Commits Mail inbox:

I have a simple 1-2-3 formula for dealing with e-mail:

1. After you log in and check out your inbox, take quick decisions on "deleting", "marking as spam", and "opening", in that order.

2. Reply ASAP to the e-mails remaining in the inbox.

3. After you reply to each e-mail, take a quick decision on whether to delete it or move it into a folder for future reference. (I have upwards of 40 folders, termed "labels" by Gmail, for each of my e-mail addresses. It may seem like a lot, but believe me, this system is a very efficient one, especially since, additionally, the search function allows me to zero in on ANY e-mail in these folders.)

Want to use this 1-2-3 formula over the weekend to organise your inbox? Be my guest. And send me a screenshot afterwards.

• ALSO READ: How to achieve "Inbox Zero".

• By the way, I prefer my desktop to be uncluttered, too. See image below:

10 things you should not say to your boss (or to your journalism professor)

Your boss has just given you a job to do. Are you going to tell him, "I will try [to do this]"? Is your boss going to be happy with your response?

No, he won't. That is why you should put your brain in gear before opening your mouth when interacting with your boss. Sunanda Poduwal, writing in The Economic Times on Sunday, elaborates on the issue. She also provides a list of 10 things you should not say to your boss ("I will try" is on the list):

1. That's Not in My Job Description
2. I Can't Do This Task
3. I Just Never Got Around To It
4. I Don't Know How To Do It
5. I Am Overqualified For This
6. Sorry, I Missed That Point
7. I Need to Talk to You, It's Important
8. I Will Try
9. Don't Blame Me — It's Not My Fault
10. Why Do I Need To Do This? This is Stupid!

Each item on this list comes with an example. Read the feature in its entirety here.

• I would like to add No. 11: "I haven't had time to read your e-mail."

• And here's No. 12 from my perspective as a journalism professor: "I find reading a bore and writing a chore... but I want to be a media professional."

UPDATE (October 1, 2103): More than 1,400 comments (at the time of writing) have been posted already. So you may want to head on over and see what the fuss is all about: Seventeen young "bosses" — leaders from The Young Entrepreneur Council — talk about the worst thing they'd ever been told by their employees. Read this enlightening piece here: "17 Things You Should Never Say to Your Boss".

ADDITIONAL READING: "17 Things The Boss Should Never Say", by Dave Kerpen, an American CEO who is also a New York Times best-selling author and keynote speaker.

Journalists in the line of fire-2

SUNDAY TIMES JOURNALIST MARIE COLVIN AND PHOTOGRAPHER REMI OCHLIK.

In 2001 Marie Colvin lost her eye in an ambush in the Sri Lankan civil war. She described the harrowing experience in a speech she gave in November 2010 on the importance of war reporting:

I had gone to the northern Tamil area from which journalists were banned and found an unreported humanitarian disaster. As I was smuggled back across the internal border, a soldier launched a grenade at me and the shrapnel sliced into my face and chest. He knew what he was doing.

Yesterday the US-born Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed by shelling in the Syrian city of Homs. A veteran war correspondent, Colvin worked for Britain's Sunday Times for more than 25 years covering conflict.

Read the text of Colvin’s November 2010 speech here: “Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice”.

Also read a tribute to photographer Remi Ochlik here: “Parting Glance”.

• Also read: "Journalists in the line of fire-1".

• UPDATE (June 6, 2016): Listen to this superb podcast produced by American media icons Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone on the journalists being held hostage in Syria, one of the most dangerous places in the world today for journalists: Kidnapped.

Why long-form narrative journalism is important for all of us

A work of non-fiction about a slum in Mumbai is a leading contender for best book of the year. But you are unlikely to read it, says Prashant Agrawal, writing in today's Mint.

The book in question is Behind the Beautiful Forevers by American journalist Katherine Boo. Agrawal writes:

[It] has won praise from India’s leading historian Ramachandra Guha, as “Without question the best book yet written on contemporary India. Also, the best work of narrative non-fiction I’ve read in 25 years.” Shashi Tharoor, an MP and best-selling author, has sung similar praises. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and others have also been effusive in praise. East or West, Katherine Boo’s India book has emerged as the best.

But Agrawal also says that statistics point to the fact that not many of us are going to pick up this book and Boo will be lucky to sell 50,000 copies in India.

Agrawal does not actually give us any statistical data; he does give his reasons, though, for his concerns and I share those concerns. Long-form journalism (Boo's book is a good example) is not for the faint of heart, Agrawal writes. It takes time and effort to read long-form journalism, and we in India are just awakening to its power.

Agrawal explains why we should not underestimate narrative non-fiction books or long-form journalism:

The stories illuminate the world around us, make us think and feel about the issues in a relatable human manner. And often the stories impact and influence public policy. ... Atul Gawande, the best-selling author, wrote a piece in The New Yorker on the rising cost of healthcare costs in the US and how to control them. President Barack Obama had his entire healthcare team read the piece and some of the outcomes were adopted in his landmark healthcare reform.

 We also get some encouraging news:

Today, in India, we are witnessing the birth of non-fiction. Meenal Baghel wrote Death in Mumbai about the Neeraj Grover murder. Beautiful Thing by Sonia Faleiro explores the dance bars of Mumbai; the book has been praised in the pages of Vanity Fair and The Economist.

Every Saturday, our paper [Mint] puts out among the best pieces of narrative journalism in India. Last Saturday, readers were led into the workings and prospects of India’s female boxing team.

Mint’s partner publication, The Wall Street Journal, recently ran an in-depth five-part series on the heinous murder of a nun in Chhattisgarh.

The Caravan magazine is trying to fill the gap of long-form journalism in India and become The New Yorker of India; The New Yorker, along with the Atlantic, are institutions of long-form journalism in the US.

As we grow as a democracy, we will see more long-form journalism — for there are many stories to tell.

Agrawal's article is a good trend story that helps us to understand how long-form narrative journalism can impact our lives. Read the piece in its entirety here: "Birth of long-form journalism".

• Also read: "A fine example of long-form journalism from a great magazine".

• Also, visit Longreads for the best long-form stories on the web.

• ADDITIONAL READING: "MATTER styles itself as "the new home for in-depth, independent journalism about the ideas that are shaping our future". The founders say it isn't quite a website, it's not really a magazine, and it's not exactly a book publisher either: "Instead, MATTER is something else — a new model for high-quality journalism...." For details, check out "Heart of the MATTER".

UPDATE (June 30, 2013): I have just placed a copy of Behind the Beautiful Forevers in the Commits library.

UPDATE (July 25, 2013): Natasha Rego (Class of 2013) loved the book so much, she has bought a copy for herself so she can read it again.

UPDATE (June 25, 2014): Read up on the latest journalism cooperative, whose aim is to produce in-depth stories, here: "Deca".