Is there no difference between "who's" and "whose"?

OCCASIONAL RANT NO. 9:

"Who's" and "whose" may sound alike (they are homophones), but surely literate people can tell the difference?

Here's the intro of an ANI story (pictured above) about Maria Sharapova:

Wellington, September 1 (ANI): Maria Sharapova, who's tennis has been going quite well at the moment, dropped a bit of off-court news at the US Open on Friday by announcing that she is no longer engaged to professional basketball player Sasha Vujacic.

Who's tennis?

This intro was used as is in DNA on Monday. Where are the subs when you need them?

Brain fog. Continuous partial attention. Who doesn't suffer from these two maladies nowadays?

In The Fall of the House of Forbes, author Stewart Pinkerton, while discussing Forbes's ambitious plans to go digital, refers to the work of an expert on the subject of what and how people read online, and we also get to understand what Web addiction can do to our brains.

We first learn that a Columbia University new media teacher, Anne Nelson, is not optimistic about the contributions of users to Websites or blogs by way of comments or editing assistance. It is foolish to expect engaging conversations, she implies, and backs up her assertions with statistics:

“Only about 0.02-0.03 per cent of English-language Wikipedia users, for instance, actually wind up actively contributing to the Website,” she says. For viewers of YouTube, she adds, “Only about 1 per cent comment.”

WHAT AND HOW PEOPLE READ ONLINE
Then, we get an insight into what and how people read online...

...Nelson cites the work of Danish Web consultant Jakob Nielsen, who has done studies of eye tracking of Web pages. Unlike print readers, whose eyes tend to zigzag across the page and scan most of the word, the eyes of people reading on backlit screens move in an F pattern: They first look at the top of the content, reading horizontally, usually not all the way across, then scan again lower down the page, but this time not reading as far, followed by a vertical scan to the bottom of the page. The result is that what’s on the middle and/or the right side of the page typically isn’t read at all.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN READING SOMETHING ONLINE AND IN PRINT
Nelson also shares with Pinkerton the results of a unique experiment she conducts with her students:

Each year in class, Nelson gives her students two long articles to read, often from The New Yorker — one online and one in print. Few students can really sum up what they’ve read online, if they can finish the piece at all. Those who read the print story did so to the end and had far higher retention and appreciation for what they’d experienced. “It’s the difference,” Nelson says, “between surfing fifty Websites and retaining very little the next day, and reading War and Peace and remembering characters and scenes ten years later.”

WEB ADDICTION
Pinkerton follows up with a brief digression into the nature of Web addiction, what’s productive and what isn’t:

Increasingly, studies at Columbia and elsewhere show that what UCLA psychiatrist Gary Small calls “brain fog”, a condition stemming from so much continuous partial attention that nothing is really ever absorbed — it never moves from the in-box to the file cabinet — is becoming more prevalent.
 
Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, writes that constant Web usage seemed to be changing “the very way my brain worked”. How? He was having trouble paying attention to one thing for more than a couple of minutes. My brain, he realised, “wasn’t just drifting. It was hungry. It was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it — and the more it was fed, the hungrier it became.” The Internet, he sensed, “was turning me into something like a high-speed data-processing machine, a human HAL. I missed my old brain.”

Brain fog. Continuous partial attention (or CPA, which I have talked about often in my class). Who doesn't suffer from these two maladies nowadays?

• Also read (from The Fall of the House of Forbes): "A venerated editor, a rookie reporter, and the sparks that flew between them, leading to a brilliant expose of Avon".
  

• Also read (from The Fall of the House of Forbes): "Why amateur bloggers will never replace journalists".
  

Apologies, Economist-style

Only in the Economist, which was first published in 1843 to take part in "a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress", will you find even the apologies to be brilliantly written.

Here's one from the August 18th-24th, 2012, issue:

CORRECTION: An article on drinking at work ("The boredom of boozeless business", August 11th) claimed that journalists at Bloomberg Businessweek could be disciplined for sipping a spritzer at work. This is not true. Sorry. We must have been drunk on the job.

And here's another from the April 7th-13th, 2012, issue:

CORRECTION: In our piece on California water last week, we claimed that a softball is four times the diameter of a tennis ball. In fact, it is only 50% bigger. Time we got out of our armchairs.

• Also read: "Apologising to readers".

• Also read: "Corporate role models: Mother Teresa and (gasp!) Lady Gaga".

Why amateur bloggers will never replace journalists

Stewart Pinkerton, a former editor of Forbes magazine, in The Fall of the House of Forbes:

What's missing from raw footage streamed to the Web is an authoritative voice, the result of years of source cultivation, the building up of levels of trust that allow a reporter to put something in context. It's something that only established news outlets ... can do: flood the zone with reporters on a major story and report not just that there was a massacre of Congolese Tutsi in Burundi or a student riot in Paris, but also knowledgeably examine the economic and political reasons behind it. Most people need an expert to filter, prioritise, and context information. A fire hose of information without that is useless.

Yet now anyone can call himself a journalist.

"Hey, I can do that."

No, you can't.

My thoughts exactly.

• Also read: Stewart Pinkerton in The Fall of the House of Forbes on "A venerated editor, a rookie reporter, and the sparks that flew between them, leading to a brilliant expose of Avon".

A venerated editor, a rookie reporter, and the sparks that flew between them, leading to a brilliant expose of Avon

I am about to finish reading a most interesting book, The Fall of the House of Forbes. I have already come across some passages, though, that will fascinate journalists and media students in India.

JIM MICHAELS

In Chapter 17, the author, Stewart Pinkerton, a former managing editor of Forbes, introduces us to Jim Michaels, "the most important editorial architect" of the magazine. Michaels, who graduated from Harvard in 1942, tried to enlist in the army during the Second World War, Pinkerton writes, but his eyesight wasn't good enough so he became an ambulance driver for the American Field Service in Burma.

After the war, and this is where it begins to become engrossing for us, Michaels signed up with a news agency, UPI, to report from India, "a place the founder of Forbes once characterised as a 'filthy country' ".

Working out of the New Delhi bureau, Michaels was the first newsman to write about the war in Kashmir, travelling on horseback to get behind Pakistani lines. In his dispatches, he described Pakistani military units marching up to the border in regimental regalia and changing into civilian clothes before crossing the border.

When Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated, Michaels's news report was, apparently, the first to reach the outside world. From The Fall of the House of Forbes:

Here in his own words, as described in a private e-mail decades later, is the scoop behind his scoop: 

It's hard to visualise, but in those long-ago days there was little automotive traffic. It took me ten minutes to get to Birla House. I got there before the police had cordoned off the property. There was immense confusion, of course, but I scribbled notes and rushed to file what, I believe, was the first detailed report to reach the outside world.

In those days, pre-Internet, pre-mobile satellite phones, one had to file overseas from Delhi by cable from the CTO (Central Telegraph Office) at Eastern Court near Connaught Place. By the time I got there to file my first dispatch and returned to the scene, Birla House was cordoned off: No entry to anyone. I knew the place fairly well so I climbed a low stone wall in the back only to confront an astonished constable, who let me pass after I flashed a credential he could not read because he was illiterate. My agile trespass gave me a leg up on most other foreign journalists because they couldn't get inside for some time.

Michaels's reporting, Pinkerton writes, showed up the next day on the front pages of newspapers all over the world. The following day, Michaels also reported "for all the world to read the details of Gandhi's funeral on the banks of the Yamuna".

Later, in Chapter 20, titled "Let's Really Stir Up the Animals", Pinkerton serves up a juicy appetiser in the intro:

Cutting stories by at least 15 per cent without shedding any facts was a Michaels trademark — the key to making Forbes readable for busy executives overloaded with information. Said one of his former proteges: "Jim could edit the Lord's Prayer down to six words, and nobody would miss anything."

Nor would Michaels tolerate a story that read like a press release. "THIS ISN'T REPORTING, IT'S STENOGRAPHY! WHY IS THIS PERSON STILL ON STAFF????" he wrote on top of one particularly credulous piece. "WHY DON'T YOU JUST SEND THEM A VALENTINE!!!" was another favourite skewer.

An editor after my own heart!

Pinkerton tells us in the same chapter that Michaels, who was editor of Forbes for an unbelievable 37 years, loved to take down big companies riding high on Wall Street and being gushed over by the competition. We then learn about a young reporter, Subrata Chakravarty, a Harvard grad, who wrote a highly critical report on Avon...

...a company with a spectacular growth rate and a high-flying stock. Chakravarty said the growth rate was a sham and that the company had been built by exploiting women. It was counter to what everyone else thought. Passing the draft to other editors, Michaels got nothing but sneers back, and toned the story down, much to Chakravarty's dismay.

Not realising that rewriting Jim Michaels was the equivalent of a death sentence, Chakravarty went back to his typewriter and reedited Michaels's edit. Not a good idea. Less than an hour after resubmitting the draft, Chakravarty's phone rang. A gravelly voice barked, "Subrata, who is the editor of this magazine?"

"You are, sir."

"That's right, and I'll thank you to remember that when I edit a story, it stays edited." Michaels slammed down the phone.

There's more to this story because Chakravarty refuses to roll over and play dead: 

Hurrying to Michaels's office, Chakravarty found him slumped in his chair, glowering darkly. "Don't come in here, I'm too mad to talk to you."

"But Mr. Michaels, I did exactly what you told me."

Michaels shot up in his chair, glaring. "I NEVER told you to rewrite me."

"Yes, you did," Chakravarty insisted, recounting an earlier lunch conversation when Michaels said that if a writer disagreed with something he had done, it could be fixed and then discussed. Michaels relaxed and even managed a tiny smile. "Well, I misspoke. I meant we would talk about what you could change. Now you've added 150 lines to a cover story, and it's already laid out. So get out of here so I can fix it again."

Convinced by Chakravarty's arguments and facts, Michaels cut the story by knifing out many of the caveats he had earlier included. After the story ran, on July 1, 1973, Avon's stock fell to $17 from $130 as its results bore out Chakravarty's analysis. It was an amazing support of a young reporter, in the face of opposition from others. But rewriting Jim Michaels was a mistake, Chakravarty recalls, "a rookie can make only once".

Later, Michaels would cite the Avon piece as a classic Forbesian tale.

SUBRATA CHAKRAVARTY

Is it any wonder that Subrata Chakravarty, the rookie reporter, later went on to become the managing editor of Forbes under Michaels?

***

• Watch a video tribute to Jim Michaels by Forbes staff: "Remembering Jim Michaels". And read "An appreciation of an original".

• Also read: "Notes on Business Journalism", by Subrata Chakravarty, posted on Outlook editor Krishna Prasad's blog. An excerpt: "Business journalism should entertain as well as offer insight. We should write as the 'drama critics of business'. What that means is that we should make it clear who the star is and who the dope. That may not make you popular with management but it’s a lot of fun to read — and it offers your insight to the reader."

• And visit the Forbes India website here. (Commitscion Nilofer D'Souza, Class of 2009, is a features writer for the magazine.)

• Also read: "The amazing books that made me fall in love with journalism all over again".

It takes a journalist (naturally) to pull off an ingenious marriage proposal

Two weeks ago, David Pogue, the brilliant technology columnist of The New York Times, proposed to Nicki, the woman he loved.

Pogue wanted his children be part of this life-changing event, he writes on his blog, so one night last spring, "I asked them for their suggestions for a fantastic proposal. My two teenagers informed me that the most epic and unforgettable proposal would be a fake movie trailer. It would start out like any other romantic-comedy preview, but gradually reveal itself to be a thinly veiled version of our love story."

Pogue continues:

After its “premiere,” people kept asking if I’d be posting it online so they could show their friends. With Nicki’s encouragement, I did — and to my astonishment, the video went viral. It also generated a lot of questions.

Among the questions:

• Nice job. But not all of us have thousands of dollars to spend on making full-blown movies for our girlfriends.

• What about the opening shot? You clearly had a crane rig for that.

• In the YouTube version, we can see your girlfriend’s reaction as she watches, picture-in-picture style. How could she not know she was being filmed?

Want to know the answers to these intriguing questions? Go here: "How to Propose the Pogue Way".

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.

You still don't have a blog?

Mark Nichol, writing on the Daily Writing Tips blog, gives you seven reasons to begin publishing your own blog right away.

I particularly endorse Reason No. 7:

Your blog provides you with a forum for developing your communication skills — not just writing but also video and audio, as well as interactivity such as networking, commenting on other websites and blogs, and responding to comments on your blog.

Read the column in its entirety here: "7 reasons to publish a blog".

• Also read: "Some great advice for first-time bloggers".

Chris Cleave proves his mettle with "Gold", his third consecutive bestseller

She tried to smile back. The smile came out like a newborn foal — its legs buckled immediately.

When you come across these lines on Page 2 of the novel you're reading, you know you have a terrific book in your hands.

Here is another passage that had me marvelling at the author's powers of description:

He heard their footsteps in the hall and he looked towards the bathroom door, preparing the wry grin he was going to use when they entered. Then, on the far side of the bathroom, he saw his partial denture standing in three inches of Listerine in its glass on the side of the basin; the six front upper teeth, moulded in acrylic and stained progressively over the years to match his real teeth. His stomach lurched. He pushed his tongue to the front of his palate and found the concavity there, with its twin surgical pegs that docked with the denture. He didn't know what he had been hoping for — that his teeth might be in two places at once, simultaneously there in the glass and here in his mouth. Somewhere in his mind his front teeth were scattered white seeds on the boards of a velodrome track. But Christ, he didn't want that memory.

Seeing his falsies in the glass gave him a desperate strength, and he hauled up again on the sides of the bath. This time he was able to heave himself over the rim. He collapsed on the floor like wet meat and dragged himself to the basin, racing the girls' footfalls as they came up the hallway. The gap in his teeth was a nakedness worse than nudity. He went faster, dragging his useless legs across the lines in the linoleum, and he felt every tenth of every second cutting into him.

He heard the bathroom door opening just as his hand reached up and found his denture. He grabbed it, brought it to his mouth and fumbled it with his freezing hands. It bounced off the rim of the sink and spun through the air. It sank, with the discreet splash of a near-perfect dive, into the toilet bowl.

This is the kind of brilliant writing that makes a book a page-turner. As soon as I am done with Gold, which should be soon, I plan to look for Chris Cleave's previous two novels, The Other Hand and Incendiary, both of which were bestsellers.

• Visit Chris Cleave's website here.

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

Yes, I am a Grammar Nazi.

That is why, in 2010, I posted 50 rants on Facebook, at the rate of one rant a day.

That is why, last month, I published a post — based on a Harvard Business Review article — on why good grammar is important for everyone, not just journalists.

And that is why I am now suggesting that every young person should read a feature on grammar gaffes that appeared in Mint recently.

It may be cool to use the latest lingo, the article asserts, but bad grammar and poor punctuation at the workplace could puncture your chances of getting a great job or a coveted promotion.

Here's the business head (south) of Titan Industries, Suparna Mitra, making a relevant point:

The quality of language today has become pathetic. Youngsters, even from premier business institutes, just don’t have a feel for the language.

Mitra says she finds even so-called communication experts like PR agencies sending out press releases riddled with grammatical and punctuation errors.

Sangeeta Singh of KPMG is just as scathing:

Today, the English language is being attacked on many fronts. Gen Y has converted English into a whole new language — LOL (Laugh out Loud), WUD (What U doing ), CU (See you) — ably aided by new social media and technology!

And banker-turned-corporate trainer Tarini Vaidya explains how grammatical errors have the potential for economic and other serious consequences

It was so stressful when I was a CXO with approval authority. Often an email would say, ‘Once we will credited the amount in our bank, update you for the same?’ It took me several minutes to completely understand what I had been told. Another sample: ‘Please approval for prematuring deposit. Customer want urgently demand draft for payment.’ I’d pray I wasn’t giving approvals to somebody wanting to sell the bank or do something illegal.

Vaidya adds that poorly constructed sentences, jumbled tenses, and missed keywords could have serious consequences, quite apart from the poor impression they create of the writers of these muddled missives.

Vaidya also has a meaningful message for young people out there:

Do not take pride in your incorrect English.

Read the article in its entirety here: "Grammar gaffes".

• 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:

• Mint also features a regular column on English usage by a former professor of English, V.R. Narayanaswami: "Plain Speaking".

• Also read: "20 questions you must ask yourself before you hit the 'Send' button".

• "We cannot help associating 'bad' grammar with low intelligence, sloppiness and lack of refinement." True? Read on: Good Applicants With Bad Grammar. Join the debate.

• Illustration courtesy: Wiktionary