You won't believe how this popular comic strip artist gets his ideas

Stephan Pastis, the creator of the wildly successful Pearls Before Swine, says the process of humour writing is most akin to what they say about the sausage: It tastes great, but you probably don’t want to see how it’s made.

Pastis makes this claim in his introduction to “This Little Piggy Stayed Home”, a collection of Pearls strips that appeared in newspapers in 2002-03.

That introduction is proof, to me, that this comic strip artist is truly a funny man. Funny ha-ha, as well as funny peculiar. Read these excerpts and you will know what I mean:

The question I get the most from Pearls readers is, “Where do you get your ideas?” And the truth is I don’t know. What I do know is that most of the better ones seem to quite literally pop into my head, with most of the dialogue already written. A good example of this is one of the more popular daily strips, where Rat asks Pig, “If you could have a conversation with one person, living or dead, who would it be?” and Pig answers, “The living one.” I don’t think I spent more than a minute writing it. It was just there. The good ones always seem to be more “found” than “created”.

I also know that the ideas seem to come in bunches. If there’s one good idea, there’s usually a few more behind it…. It’s like all you have to do is keep the pen moving.

But the converse of this is also true. When there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there. I’ve had days where I’ve written for ten straight hours, not eating and not leaving my room, and I have not come up with a single idea. …

While the thought process remains more or less a mystery, I have learned that there are certain circumstances that seem to be more conducive to creativity than others. For me, the key is total isolation, loud music, and coffee. Every time I explain what I do to achieve this in interviews, I look unbelievably strange. But it’s the truth, and I am strange, so here goes.

First, I lock myself in a spare bedroom in our house. I remove the phone. I close the blinds. I even put a folding chair in front of the door, in case the lock doesn’t work. I also turn off the lights, leaving only the minimal amount of sunlight that comes in through the closed blinds to show me where the notepad is.

Second I turn on loud music. I have about a dozen compilation CDs that I’ve made, filled with what I think are great, soaring, more or less spiritual songs in which you can lose yourself. There tends to be a lot of U2, Peter Gabriel, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, and Counting Crows in the mix….

Third, I drink a lot of coffee…two large cups. For the first hour, I just drink the coffee and walk back and forth with my headphones on, head nodding up and down to the music, occasionally playing the air guitar, and air drums and dancing. As I’m usually wearing only my boxers, you now have a good visual of how strange this really is.

To make matters even stranger, I periodically go to my bookshelf and read the same sections of the same books over and over. They are: 1) the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby; 2) the beginning of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; and 3) Ernest Hemingway’s short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”.

By the second hour of this, the ideas will usually start coming, and I’ll lie on my stomach on the floor and write them all down in a spiral notepad. I don’t draw at all. I only write. After about eight hours of this, I’ll usually have a week’s worth of strips written. Which means I can put on my pants and get dinner…hopefully in that order.

So now you know.

And then Pastis has the last word, or three. “Enjoy your sausage,” he tells us.

If you're a Pearls fan, you will agree that in Pastis’s case we not only relish our sausage but also revel in seeing how it is made.

• For more advice on cartooning from Stephan Pastis, visit the official Pearls Before Swine blog: “Cartooning 101”.

• Photograph and comic strips © Stephan Pastis

Is there anything more soothing — or more inspirational?

DESIDERATA

• By Max Ehrmann

¶ Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

¶ Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

¶ Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of  time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

ARTWORK © SHERRIE LOVLER

¶ Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

¶ Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

¶ You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

¶ Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

¶ With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann said he wrote Desiderata (Latin: "desired things", plural of desideratum), for himself "because it counsels those virtues I felt most in need of".

Ehrmann (pictured left), a Harvard-schooled philosopher and lawyer, wrote it in 1927 and copyrighted it that year. Largely unknown in the author's lifetime, the text became widely known, according to the entry in Wikipedia, after its use in a devotional, after subsequently being found at Adlai Stevenson's deathbed in 1965, and after spoken-word recordings in 1971 and 1972. 

More details are available on Wikipedia here.

*
Reading "Desiderata" can make your day, every day

SAUMYA IYER

By Commitscion Saumya Iyer
(Class of 2014)

I absolutely loved this piece!

For people like me, who wallow in perpetual self doubt, it’s something you know instinctively and take for granted; it's something somebody tells you every now and then but you pay no heed. However, reading it all at once certainly resonated with me as it finally struck me that I need to have more confidence in myself and in my abilities (even though I might dive back into my shell of self doubt from time to time).

I think it is a must to have a giant-sized print of "Desiderata" up on your wall so that the moment you wake up, the first thing you read is this. And, honestly, it would just make your day, like it did mine.

***
ART FOR HEART'S SAKE
UPDATE (October 27, 2012): I received this message from American artist Sherrie Lovler today: "Desiderata is a wonderful piece to read daily, and the image you have posted here is my art and it is available for purchase, so you can have it hanging on your wall. For permission to use my artwork on your blog, I simply ask for a link to my site from the image. Thank you for spreading these great words by Max Ehrmann."

Thank you for alerting me to my lapse, Sherrie. I am more than happy to provide a link to your elegant artwork in the caption to the image (see above).

PR, Advertising, and Journalism go to a party...

Commitscion Samarpita Samaddar (Class of 2010)
Public Relations: At a party, you see a gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie; you walk up to her, pour her a drink. You open the door for her, offer her a ride, and then say, "By the way, I'm rich. Will you marry me?"

Advertising: You're at a party with a bunch of friends and you see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her, points at you, and says, "He's rich. Marry him."

*
Ramesh Prabhu
Journalism: As you join the party, you see PR and Advertising quarrelling over the prettiest girl there. You swing by, give her the look, throw her a line (or your byline — you're a journalist, after all!). And she says, "Marry me."

• An excerpt from a Facebook conversation of March 9, 2011.

What is YOUR definition of success?

Here's a little reminder that life is not about having the flashiest cellphone or the swankiest car:

¶ To laugh often and love much ¶ To win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children ¶ To earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends ¶ To appreciate beauty ¶ To find the best in others ¶ To give of one's self ¶ To leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition ¶ To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation ¶ To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived ¶ This is to have succeeded.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, was seen as a champion of individualism and a critic of the countervailing pressures of society. He disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

From industry newbie to full-fledged TV news correspondent: Follow the travails of the intrepid "Satyabhama Menon"

SHWETA GANESH KUMAR WITH FANS AT THE BANGALORE LAUNCH OF HER NEW BOOK.

It was a privilege — and a great pleasure — to be invited to say a few words about a dynamic young author and her new book at the launch event in Bangalore on Wednesday.

Shweta Ganesh Kumar, who has been the Bangalore correspondent for CNN-IBN (she later joined Greenpeace India as a communications officer and is today a full-time writer and travel columnist), has two books to her credit already. Coming up on the Show... The Travails of a News Trainee, which was published last year, featured aspiring TV news reporter Satyabhama Menon and her life as a newbie in the industry. In Between the Headlines: The Travails of a News Reporter, the book that was released on Wednesday, we get to read about Satyabhama's experiences as a full-fledged news correspondent.

Both books are easy reads. And both books, since they are based loosely on the author's own career as a television journalist, have important insights to offer youngsters who are aspiring to join one of India's many TV news channels.

I would also recommend Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines for three reasons: Language, Content, and Message.

Language: Good writers use simple language to express powerful ideas. Take Khushwant Singh. Or M.J. Akbar. Or even the current favourite of young adults, Suzanne Collins, the author of The Hunger Games trilogy. Shweta, too, keeps it simple: When you read her books, you won't need to keep a dictionary by your side.

Content: Reading Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines will acquaint media students (as well as anyone with an interest in the news-gathering process) with the challenges faced by television journalists. Sure, both books are works of fiction but there are kernels of truth in the descriptions of the obstacles in Satyabhama's path as she struggles to present her news stories on her channel.

Message: There are many things you can learn from reading Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines, and they are not all about journalism alone. The underlying message in the books is that it is important to take the initiative. And to stand up for what you believe is right. The books also seem to prove my favourite adage: If you love what you do, you get to do what you love.

SHWETA IN AN INTERACTION WITH THE AUDIENCE AT THE BANGALORE LAUNCH.

Two days after Between the Headlines was released in Bangalore, Shweta headed to Pune for the launch event in that city. And this week she is off to Kochi to release the book there. But hectic schedule notwithstanding, like the good professional she is, she made time to answer in detail via e-mail five questions I had for her on subjects ranging from the audience she kept in mind while writing her books to the note of cynicism some readers may have picked up on in both Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines:

1. What is the audience you had in mind when writing Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines?

One of my favourite sayings about writing and reading is “Write the book you want to read.” And this is primarily what I had in mind when writing both Coming up on the Show and Between the Headlines.

As a fresh journalism graduate and newly recruited news trainee in 2006, I had always wondered whether there were others who had shared my experiences. I searched my favourite bookstores for books with fictional characters I could empathise with, but found none. All the fiction books that I found on Indian journalism were written by senior journalists who had written about major news events and campaigns. I did not find anything on the shelves that told the story of bright-eyed news trainees and rookie reporters and talked about what it is like to be on the bottom-most level of the news pyramid. These were the people I wanted to write about and write for.

Also, as a working TV news reporter, I had come across a lot of people who wanted to know just how the news was produced and what life behind the camera was like for a TV news reporter. These were the readers I had in mind when I started writing the books.

2. There is a notion that writing a book is not that difficult. But I would suggest that a lot of hard work is involved. Your thoughts? Can you also give us an idea of your writing schedule?

The biggest challenge about being a full-time writer is sticking with it to the end, in the absence of an external editor, boss, or deadline. Especially in the beginning — when you have no idea that your manuscript might be picked up for publication at all — it is easy to sit down and put your hands up.

Every writer has their own, personal approach to the writing process. My own style is built around discipline and being methodical. The hard part is to make sure that you buckle down every day and type out a certain amount of words to reach that ultimate goal of a completed manuscript.

It is also very easy to procrastinate or give up. In my case, it was that intense need to see my published book in my hand that kept me going as well as the full-fledged support from my family.

Whenever I start a book I decide on a certain number of words for the final manuscript. I then work backwards to decide on the number of words I have to write per day to finish the first draft of the manuscript by a certain date. I try to stick to my schedule no matter where I am. I also put down tentative chapter outlines and then fill them up as I go. After I finish the first draft of a novel, I let it lie for at least two months till I look at it again with fresh eyes.

3. How did you find a publisher? That couldn't have been easy, either. And how did you deal with rejections? I think aspiring writers will be looking to you for inspiration in this regard.

Rejection is a very hard obstacle to get past. But I’d say that it also depends on the way you use those rejection letters that you are most certainly going to get. (Well, most certainly if you decide to mail manuscripts off to publishers without the backing of an agent or a recommendation like I did.)

The first rejection was heart-breaking. I am quite sure that I went through the five stages of grief when I received that stinging little note. But I bounced back, thanks to my parents and my husband. I started filing away my rejection letters in a folder named “Motivation” and as soon as I got one, I would mail the manuscript to yet another publisher. I believe that, as a young, unknown writer, this is the only way you can handle rejection, without letting it defeat you.

My first publisher Srishti was the 22nd publisher I had sent my manuscript to, having found e-mail addresses and mailing addresses on the web. Good Times Books, the publisher of my second book, approached me for my manuscript after they saw how well the first book had done.

4. “If you want to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader.” This is what I tell all my students at Commits. Can you elaborate on the importance of reading in your life and the role of reading in your writing?

I’ve had the good fortune to grow up surrounded by books. My parents started reading to me at an age that I cannot even remember and that is what motivated me to start putting down my thoughts, no matter how silly or random they were.

My reading helped me stand in good stead in my career as a journalist. And today while I am a writer, I am a reader first. I don’t think it is possible for any writer to ignore reading if she or he wants to connect with others and to learn the many ways of expressing their thoughts in the best possible way.

5. And, finally, some readers may have concerns over what they feel is a note of cynicism in your books when it comes to the electronic media. How would you address those concerns? And what would you like to say to young people whose ambition is to be good television journalists?

To my readers who feel there is a note of cynicism in my books, I’d like to say that it surely wasn’t meant to be that way. Both the books were written with a very subjective and personal point of view. It does not necessarily reflect the current status of the Indian broadcast news industry.

Also, I am a very emotional person and as a working TV news journalist I used to get attached to the people whose stories I reported. I would want to make sure that I could take these issues to their logical conclusion. However, I soon found out that as a reporter it is not always possible to do so. I know many of my colleagues have faced this dilemma as well and it is this that I have tried to convey through my book’s protagonist, Satyabhama Menon.

To the young people who aspire to be TV news journalists, I’d like to say that you need to remember that you are a reporter first and your duty is to report stories and make sure that you in your limited way are able to amplify the voice of the people. However, you are a reporter and you need to understand that being objective is key and that to go far in your chosen profession, you need to find that fine balance between being an activist and an unbiased newsperson.

• You can also read an interview with Shweta that was published in The Hindu here: Behind the Scenes.

The Right to Education Act: Where do you stand on the debate?

Private schools in Karnataka do not want to implement the Right to Education Act this year, according to a news report (see below) in today's DNA.

Paucity of time to implement the act is not the only sore point; in fact, there is much heartburn over it, but why? Here, three columnists, two of them senior journalists, give us their insightful — and instructive — perspective.

Read the column by Aakar Patel in Mint to understand the importance of research when writing an opinion piece. Look how, with the aid of statistics (and examples from literature), he is able to convince us that "the children that this great law will produce will be different from us and they will be better". Read his column in its entirety here: "Transformation for the better".

Shoba Narayan, another popular Mint columnist, also has done her research. She has read "Parth Shah’s critique of the RTE Act in a blog; as well as newspaper commentaries by Abhijit Banerjee, Raghuram Rajan and Manish Sabharwal". And she has "asked teachers and school administrators about why this Act’s philosophical aspiration is so far removed from the practical realities they operate in".

Her column will appeal especially to parents because she says she is approaching this debate from the point of view of a parent and citizen. Her conclusion:

As a parent, I laud the intent. I am willing to help make it work. But as a student of psychology, I don’t think plonking underprivileged children in elite schools is the solution.

Read Shoba Narayan's column in its entirety here: "Philosophically distant from reality".

Also writing as a parent is NDTV editorial director and anchor Sonia Singh. Her opinion piece, published in Outlook, argues in favour of the RTE Act. If implemented properly, she writes, classrooms in which the RTE experiment is being carried out will shape India’s next social revolution. She insists that, since our children are India’s future, we should let them grow up in a country where equality begins in their classrooms.

You can read Sonia Singh's article in its entirety here: "Dirty Three-Letter Words".

Where do YOU stand on the RTE debate?

• Illustration courtesy: Sorit/Outlook

How to persuade people to participate in your survey: An e-mail from Poynter's News University

A Little Help, Please: What's the Future for Journalism Education?

Poynter's News University 

newsunewsletters@email.poynter.org

Dear Ramesh, There's lots of talk swirling around the topic of the value of a journalism degree. Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman and CEO, in a speech at the University of North Carolina recently, told journalism students they should change their major. "If you're going into journalism if you care, then you're going into the wrong profession … I usually ask (journalists) if they want to change the world in the way it wants to be changed,” Ailes said. Tom Huang, Poynter adjunct faculty member, has a slightly different take: "Actually, you should go into journalism if you want to save the world. My point is that you don't get to choose the time that you're called upon to be brave and do your best work. Don't forget: A time of crisis and change is a time of incredible opportunity,” he wrote for Poynter.org. What's your take on this? Whether you are a student, educator or professional, we would like to know what you think about the value of a journalism degree. Poynter's Howard Finberg, who has been thinking about the future of journalism and journalism education for years, will be giving a talk at the European Journalism Centre on the future of journalism education, and he hopes you'll fill out a very short [four to five questions only] survey. He'll share what he learns at AEJMC this summer as well. Here's the link to the survey: www.surveymonkey.com/s/journ_edu_future2012. As Poynter NewsU's gift to you for taking the time to share your thoughts, we'll give you a 35 percent discount code to any of our Webinars or Webinar Replays. You'll get the code when you complete the survey. In advance, thanks for your help. The NewsU Crew Poynter's News University is one of the world's most innovative online journalism training programs ever created. From multimedia techniques to writing and reporting, we've got more than 250 courses to help manage your career. As the e-learning home of The Poynter Institute, NewsU extends Poynter's mission as a school for journalists, future journalists and teachers of journalism. For more information, please visit,  www.newsu.org. For information about Poynter, go to www.poynter.org. Follow us on

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• Also read: Move your mouse to Poynter.

Mike Wallace: An interrogator of the famous and infamous

Before Karan Thapar, there was Mike Wallace.

Wallace, who died earlier this month aged 93, became one of America’s best-known broadcast journalists, according to a New York Times obituary, as an interrogator of the famous and infamous on the CBS news programme, 60 Minutes.

MIKE WALLACE IN HIS CBS OFFICE IN 2006. (PHOTO COURTESY: AP)

The New York Times obituary, written by Tim Weiner, gives us a glimpse into the man and his interviewing, or grilling, style:

A reporter with the presence of a performer, Mr. Wallace went head to head with chiefs of state, celebrities and con artists for more than 50 years, living for when “you forget the lights, the cameras, everything else, and you’re really talking to each other,” he said in an interview with the New York Times videotaped in July 2006 and released on his death as part of the online feature “Last Word.”

Mr. Wallace created enough such moments to become a paragon of television journalism in the heyday of network news. As he grilled his subjects, he said, he walked “a fine line between sadism and intellectual curiosity.”

His success often lay in the questions he hurled, not the answers he received.

The obit continues:

For a 1976 report on Medicaid fraud, the show’s producers set up a simulated health clinic in Chicago. Was the use of deceit to expose deceit justified? Hidden cameras and ambush interviews were all part of the game, Mr. Wallace said, though he abandoned those techniques in later years, when they became clichés and no longer good television.

Some subjects were unfazed by Mr. Wallace’s unblinking stare. When he sat down with the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian leader, in 1979, he said that President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt “calls you, Imam — forgive me, his words, not mine — a lunatic.” The translator blanched, but the Ayatollah responded, calmly calling Sadat a heretic.

“Forgive me” was a favourite Wallace phrase, the caress before the garrote. “As soon as you hear that,” he told the Times, “you realise the nasty question’s about to come.”

Journalists, especially those working in television, would surely be interested in learning more about Wallace and his reporting techniques. How about the rest of us? Are there any lessons we can draw from Wallace's life? Yes, says Eric Jackson, a Forbes contributor, and they apply whether you care about journalism or not:

1. If you don’t wake up in the morning excited to pick up where you left your work yesterday, you haven’t found your calling yet.

2. When a new medium comes along, embrace its possibilities.

3. If you aren’t breaking the rules a little in your profession, you aren’t going far enough.

4. How would your life be different if your epitaph read “Tough But Fair”?

5. Face your demons head on.

Jackson elaborates on each point on the Forbes website: "5 Lessons from Mike Wallace's Life for All of Us".

Jackson also provides links to highlights of three of Wallace's interviews. Watch the snippet from the 1976 interview with the Shah of Iran and also the nine-and-a-half-minute-long excerpt of Wallace's interview with Ayn Rand. You can watch the full Ayn Rand interview here. It was shot in 1959 in B&W and the production values may not be great. But it's riveting stuff nevertheless.

• Thank you, Kokila Jacob, for the Eric Jackson tip-off.

How would you like to test your knowledge... and help end world hunger at the same time?

I flunked a simple "Level 5" grammar question on FreeRice.com today — but never mind. I get a chance to continue answering questions on a variety of subjects and at increasing levels of difficulty. For every answer I get right, FreeRice donates ten grains of rice to the needy.

So what is FreeRice.com? It is a website run by the United Nations World Food Programme. And it has two goals:

1. Provide education to everyone for free.

2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is made possible by the generosity of the sponsors who advertise on the site.

Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your education can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.

Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide.

You can test your knowledge on many topics:

1. HUMANITIES
    Famous Paintings
    Literature

2. GEOGRAPHY
    Flags of the world
    Identify Countries on the Map
    World Capitals
    World Landmarks

3. ENGLISH
    English Vocabulary
    English Grammar

4. MATH
    Multiplication Table
    Basic Math (Pre-Algebra)

5. CHEMISTRY
    Chemical Symbols (Full List)
    Chemical Symbols (Basic)

6. LANGUAGE LEARNING
    German
    Spanish
    French
    Italian

7. SCIENCES
    Human Anatomy

8. TEST PREPARATION
    SAT®

The beauty of this programme is that you get to sharpen your mind even as you contribute to ending hunger in the world. As my students would say, how cool is that?

A sure cure for those who believe that good writing necessarily involves the use of bombastic phrases and big words

‎"From 2002 to 2012, it has been one long, heart wrenching and mind searing decade; an agonising 10 years that saw us corralled into a black hole of existential angst provoked by a fratricidal polemic catechism that cast serious doubt on our intrinsic identity as a civilised nation". What is the journalist trying to say here? Why can't journalists write in English in English dailies/sites?

This lament on Facebook by my friend Sudhir Prabhu gives me an opportunity to ride my favourite hobby-horse: Railing against the decline in standards of written English and correcting the alarming tendency to believe that "flowery" English is good English.

Sudhir was referring to a column he had read on Rediff.com, not in a newspaper. Written by someone called Vivek Gumaste, the article is a comment on the SIT report on Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. After reading that dense intro, my heart went out to Sudhir. Really, what does Gumaste's opening sentence mean? A quick search on the net revealed this little tidbit about the writer: "Vivek Gumaste is a US-based academic and political commentator." Ah! Mystery solved — Gumaste, from what I can make out, is most emphatically NOT a journalist; he is an academic, and academic writers love clutter, which explains why his piece is littered with "academese".

I have to say here, though, that our English newspapers and magazines are also guilty, sometimes, of publishing news reports and features written in a language that, to put it mildly, is uninteresting.

Which brings me to a book that has just been delivered to me by Flipkart.

Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers is a sure cure for those who believe that good writing necessarily involves the use of bombastic phrases and big words. Written by Harold Evans, this book is primarily for journalists, but "its lessons are of immense value to all who face the problem of giving information, whether to the general public or within business, professional, or social organisations".

Evans has been hailed as a "great editor, great teacher of editors" by one of his successors at The Times (London). He has also been praised as a "master of how to use the English language". And Essential English comes highly recommended by The Society of Editors: "The book was required reading for all those who became journalists in the 1970s. This new edition must become required reading for all those who will become journalists in the new millennium."

Writing in the preface, Neil Fowler, president of the Society of Editors, explains why this book is essential reading:

It has become far too fashionable for the use of good English to be derided. Indeed our own profession has not always helped the matter. Newspapers, radio stations, and television broadcasters have all contributed to sloppy usage of the language. This is not to say that English should not be dynamic and move forward. Of course it should. But it must also be correct. There is a virtue in all language being correct and the journalist who believes otherwise is a poor journalist.

...information is of no use at all if it is obscured by poor, jargon-ridden, and dense English. Clear English should be a priority for all those who use the language. And news English at its best is the clearest English of all.

• Essential English consists of nine chapters, each of which is an education in itself. Evans begins with "The Making of a Newspaper", before moving on to "Good English", "Words", "Watch this Language", "The Structure of a News Story — Intros", The Structure of a News Story — The News Lead", and "Background". He ends the book with "Headlines" and "Headline Vocabulary". Order your copy from Flipkart today.

ALSO READ:

* The book you must read to rid your English of Indlish. In other words, read this book to learn to write plain English

* In one place, everything you want to know about writing in English