This blog is primarily for media aspirants as well as young journalists. My aim is to provide links to articles that will enhance their understanding of the media and help them to improve their writing skills, broaden their horizons, and expand their worldview. My hope is that The Reading Room will also help them to become good media professionals.
Can a sentence begin with "and"? Are you allowed to begin a sentence with "but"? These are two questions I'm asked every year by our new students. And when I tell them, of course you can, they are sceptical. But this is not what is taught in school, they tell me.
What does one of the world's greatest newspapers, The New York Times, have to say on the issue? Yes, you CAN begin sentences with "and" and "but". Writing in a Timesblog on usage and style, Philip B. Corbett asserts that “but” is preferable in many cases to the stilted “however,” and “and” is simpler than “in addition” or similar phrases.
Corbett, who is the associate managing editor for standards and also in charge of The Times’s style manual, has compiled, in one post, answers to some of the most common questions regarding grammar, usage, and style, including the following:
In The Times of India Crest Edition of June 23, Purnima Sharma interviews Salima Raza, writer and director of a new play about the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and his Irish wife, Alys. Here is a quote from the interview:
"Their camaraderie was like a meeting of souls. Alys, like Faiz, was as intelligent, passionate and as committed to love as to their common cause — the upliftment of the poor and deprived, " says Raza.
It can be unnerving for some youngsters to walk to the front of a room, or go up on stage, and make a presentation to twenty or thirty people, forget a few hundred, in the audience. Is there a way to quiet their anxiety? Yes indeed, writes Selena Rezvani on the Forbes website.
Rezvani, who recently had to present a workshop to more than a thousand women around the globe at a "webinar", says she began feeling the pressure as the event neared.
As the registration numbers climbed prior to the event, so did my anxiety. I fussed and fretted — and it wasn’t until I found a list I’d jotted down last year that I got my focus back; that list contained four strategies that I’d focused on and upheld during my best presentations.
Rezvani then shares those four strategies:
Don’t be self-centered!
Find your right rehearsal level
Get right to it
Think connection, not perfection
These are all excellent tips, which Rezvani elaborates on in her article. Check it out here.
UPDATE (September 20, 2013): Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte, an American company that specialises in "turning ideas into persuasive presentations", has this important advice to offer:
Let’s clear something up: you, as the presenter or speaker, are not the
most important guy/girl in the room.
Just because you’re on a stage or
in front of a crowd does not make you the savior everyone has been
waiting for. (This applies whether you are addressing a conference of
ten thousand or holding a team meeting with three people.)
Recognize
that you are Yoda, not Luke.
The most important people in the room are
your audience: make them the heroes of your story.
Defer to them, because if they don’t engage and believe in your
message, you are the one who loses. Without their help, your idea will
fail. Become the mentor in their story and whisper guidance in their ear, empowering them to be the agents of change and achieve greatness.
Read Duarte's post in its entirety here: "Like Yoda You Must Be" (I hope you have watched the Star Wars movies, or know about this cultural phenomenon.)
Mint Lounge has just launched a fortnightly series that is sure to warm the cockles of the hearts of poets and poetry lovers everywhere. "Poetry Pradesh", which will bring readers "stories about publishing, writing, and preserving poetry", is a serious attempt to give space to an art form that many Indian publications ignore.
In the inaugural column published earlier this month, Rajni George admits that selling poetry is tough. She writes:
Being ignored as well as sometimes blindly adored by the masses is the birthright of poetry. Even dedicated readers do not always have time for it. Out of everyone reading the books pages, a few might read this piece.
However, George asserts, poetry is still a vocal player in its tough corner of the market and she then puts the spotlight on a small group of publishers who, as she says, comprise India’s independent poetry scene today.
You can also savour two poems here, one by Adil Jussawalla, and the other by Tenzin Tsundue.
You may also like to read Aakar Patel's scintillating explanation of why Gulzar and Javed Akhtar need to be considered among the great poets of Urdu, alongside Mir, Ghalib, Iqbal, and Faiz: "The list isn't complete".
UPDATE (July 1, 2012): In the second column in the "Poetry Pradesh" series, Gayatri Jayaraman puts the spotlight on the lack of poetry archives in India. Also on offer: Two poems from Adil Jussawalla's archive.
In "The Fantastic 40s", its cover story on June 24, The Economic Times on Sunday features Mumbai trauma surgeon Anand Patil in a sidebar with this ghastly faux pas in the caption:
"New goals for life: For eg: To run all five great marathons of the world."
Here's the problem: "e.g." is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase "exempli gratia", which means "for example". So you CANNOT write "for eg".
It is not often that I can be persuaded to subscribe to a blog by parting with my e-mail address and signing up to receive a weekly newsletter. I am picky that way. So far, I have only opened up my in-box to one blogger and that is Dr. Mardy Grothe. But, a couple of days ago, I chanced upon Brain Pickings, a veritable treasure chest lovingly handcrafted by Maria Popova, and after having studied the wonderful "pickings" on offer, I have just now signed up for the "free weekly interestingness digest". Who can say no to an interestingness digest?
What first attracted me to Brain Pickings was Popova's post about nine books on reading and writing. Many of my favourite books, including The Elements of Style,Stephen King's On Writing, and Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury, are on the list. There are some books here that were new to me: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott; How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, by Stanley Fish; and Ernest Hemingway on Writing. (Flipkart — here I come!)
Of course, it's not just the list that I found interesting but what Popova had to say about each book and the excerpts she has chosen from each one. Here is her introductory comment on the The Elements of Style edition that is No. 1 on her list:
If anyone can make grammar fun, it’s Maira Kalman — The Elements of Style Illustrated marries Kalman’s signature whimsy with Strunk and White’s indispensable style guide to create an instant classic.
And here's Popova on How to Write a Sentence:
It belongs not on the shelf of your home library but in your brain’s most deep-seated amphibian sensemaking underbelly — an insightful, rigorous manual on the art of language that may just be one of the best such tools since The Elements of Style.
Ability is what you're capable of doing.
Motivation determines what you do.
Attitude determines how well you do it.
This quote, by retired American football coach, Leo "Lou" Holtz, who is now an active sportscaster, author, and motivational speaker, was one of the many gems I received last night in an e-mail from Dr. Marty Grothe (I am a subscriber to his "Quotes of the Week" newsletter).
What he has to say about the importance of attitude is so apt, and so beneficial, that I am reproducing his piece in full, complete with homework assignment:
DR. MARDY GROTHE
"Would You Benefit From an Attitude Adjustment?" By Dr. Marty Grothe Most people think that the word "attitude" refers to people's opinions or feelings. And while that is reasonably accurate, the primary definition of the word is "a position of the body or limbs, a manner of carrying oneself." In this primary sense, synonyms of the word are posture, carriage, pose, and stance—all words that refer to the characteristic position we assume with regard to the world about us.
So when I ask the question, "Would you benefit from an attitude adjustment?", I am speaking as a kind of chiropractor of the mind, and my question is suggesting that your mental alignment may be slightly off—and possibly even in need of a treatment. Okay, I realise the metaphor may be slightly forced, but bear with me for a moment as I pursue it further.
Just as our skeletal alignments can be "off," so can our attitudes about the world. We see it all the time with people whose emotional states are not in synch with the reality of their lives. Many worry when there is no rational reason to do so. Others are fearful when there is no good reason to be afraid. Some are tight-fisted and penurious, even when they are well off, or even wealthy. You get the picture.
If you're living a completely healthy, effective, and satisfying life, then you can skip over the rest of this section.
But if things are not going as well as you'd like, then it's possible you might benefit from an attitude adjustment.
So here's a homework assignment. Select a half-dozen trusted people and ask them to peruse the "attitude" quotations that appear at the end of this paragraph. Then, one by one, ask them this question: "Having read over these quotations, I'd like your feedback on how well my attitudes are working for me. In what ways are they serving me well, and where do I need to make some changes to function more effectively?"
Once you ask the question, listen attentively. When the person stops talking, don't offer any reactions. Simply ask, "What else?" And then listen some more. Before you embark on the assignment, though, let your thinking be stimulated by these observations of the subject:
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain. Maya Angelou
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. Hugh Downs
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome. William James
The last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. Viktor Frankl
The essence of spiritual practice is your attitude toward others. Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self. Eric Hoffer
Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. Lou Holtz
Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude. Katherine Mansfield
A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier. Tom Stoppard
If you can't change your fate, change your attitude. Amy Tan
If life becomes hard to bear, we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Want to know more about Dr. Mardy Grothe? Check out this Reading Room post which I published last September.
Thank you, Shubha Mudgal, for introducing me to music and musicians that I did not know existed.
Mudgal, the noted singer of Hindustani classical music, writes a regular column called "Music Matters" (a clever title that) in Mint Lounge. It is from reading Mudgal's most recent piece that I learnt of Soulmate, the Shillong-based band, and Tipriti Kharbangar, Soulmate's lead vocalist.
That's Tipriti above, performing Voodoo Woman with Soulmate in the US last year. After you watch this video you will have no trouble understanding what Mudgal meant when she described Tipriti's voice as "gut-wrenching and intensely tuneful".
Tipriti also sings in Khasi, her mother tongue. Here's Mudgal's observation after listening to Soulmate perform Shillong (Sier Lapalang):
I had no idea what the words meant but there was this give-it-all-you-have abandon and sense of conviction in her voice that was both stunning and riveting at the same time. In fact, there was this lament-like quality about the song, but not a resigned lie-down-and-cry-your-heart-out kind of lament. It was a wild, uninhibited howl-like lament that brought down an attentive hush on the listeners.
Coming from an accomplished vocalist herself, that's high praise indeed.
Read Shubha Mudgal's column in its entirety here: "Talk to the Blues".
UPDATE: Five minutes after I posted the link to this post on the Facebook wall of Commitscion Baniaikymaw Lydia Shanpru, who hails from Shillong, she returned the favour by sending me links to some Soulmate tracks on in.com. Thanks so much, Baniaikymaw.
UPDATE (June 22, 2012): Commitscion Nishal Lama not only commented on my Facebook link, but he also provided a link to Soulmate's music on MySpace: "Thanks for sharing this one. They are simply amazing. In fact, one of the best blues bands from India. I am lucky to have seen and shot a couple of their gigs in Bangalore. Tips and Rudy make an amazing couple. I remember Shubha Mudgal mentioning one more artist from Assam, Angarag Mahanta, in of her pieces in Mint. You should check him out too. Cheers!" And here's the MySpace link: "Soulmate".
UPDATE (February 9, 2013): Mint yesterday featured Tipriti and Rudy in "Love Issue 2013". Read the article to know more about the couple: "Shillong sung blue".
Headline in DNA today — "Empower mothers to control children's sexual abuse"
"Control"
as in, say, "control a child's access to the internet"? Meaning allow
the child access to the internet but exercise control over the websites
the child visits.
Is "control" the appropriate word in
that headline? Shouldn't it have been written as "Empower mothers to
prevent children's sexual abuse"?
"Maturity is the ability: to do a job whether you're supervised or not; to finish a job once it's started; to carry money without spending it; and to bear an injustice without wanting to get even." ~ Abigail van Buren (often misattributed to twin sister, Ann Landers)
(My view exactly — except I have never been able to articulate it as well as Abigail van Buren, who, way back in 1956, founded the extremely popular advice column, Dear Abby. To read the column, which is now being run by Abigail van Buren's daughter, go here.)
I have more than 20 years' experience (1981 to 2003) as a journalist in India and Dubai, specializing in selecting and editing news reports and features. From 2003 to 2019, I taught journalism and writing skills to master’s students at Commits, a media college in Bangalore.
I joined Cactus Communications ("Serving Science Worldwide") as a copyediting freelancer on October 1, 2019. From the very beginning, I have enjoyed the challenge of working on a new assignment each day. I like to think of every article as a daily crossword puzzle that I need to solve by examining the clues closely. And, finally, when I submit the article that I have tended, I like to think, with love and care, I feel deeply satisfied.
