Usage of - the likes of...

Instinctively I feel that 'the likes of' cannot be used in a positive sense - it sort of jangles my language sensibilities. For instance, in today's paper I read: The screening of the film 'Heroine' was attended by the likes of Waheeda Rehman, Asha Parekh, Shammi Aunty, and Helen...'

These were all great stars of yesteryear. But, besides this, these ladies are human beings, daughters/wives/mothers/grandmothers, and possibly role models for many aspiring film stars, and young people in our star-struck country. Using the phrase 'the likes of' somehow, I believe, diminshes them.

Since the phrase has the word 'like' in it, I decided to study this a little more. So I went a-searching on the Net (thank God for the Net!). This is what I found:

In some circles it is considered a faux pas to use 'like' instead of 'as' or 'as if' - so, maybe we could say .....stars of the calibre of.... or stars of yesteryear such as....

About the word 'like', this is what I found:

Writers since Chaucer's time have used like as a conjunction, but 19th-century and 20th-century critics have been so vehement in their condemnations of this usage that a writer who uses the construction in formal style risks being accused of illiteracy or worse. Prudence requires - The dogs howled as (not like) we expected them to. Like is more acceptably used as a conjunction in informal style with verbs such as feel, look, seem, sound, and taste, as in - It looks like we are in for a rough winter. But here too 'as if' is to be preferred in formal writing. There can be no objection to the use of like as a conjunction when the following verb is not expressed, as in He took to politics like a duck to water.

By extension, one would not use 'the likes of' for people (unless it is something derogatory), and in formal writing - and news editing is formal - one would prefer the use of 'as in' or 'as....among others', or something along these lines.

So, we would rather use - Automobiles such as Mercedes, Toyota, and Hyundai are to be increasingly seen on the streets of India - rather than - Automobiles of the likes of Mercedes, Toyota, and Hyundai are to be increasingly seen on the streets of India.

A news item...

in today's Business Standard had this sentence -

Trends are too early to predict whether the tablets are going to canabalise the PC segment, but in 2011-12, sales of tablet PCs had started cannibalising the netbook sales.

Besides the fact that the sentence is confusing, the obvious jumps out - Canabalise? cannibalising?

Should have been cannibalize.....................cannibalizing

and - Tends are too early to predict whether tablets are going to cannibalize the PC segment, but in 2011-12, sales of tablet PCs had started cannibalizing netbook sales.

(cannibalize meaning to gobble up)

Pity the editor didn't confirm the spelling...or check the unnecessary use of the definite article.

A word...

I came across while editing the newsletter I work on - kerfuffle. The Oxford Dictionary gives its meaning as: a commotion or fuss, especially one caused by conflicting views.

It is however used informally - so I had to replace it. But, a nice word to use!!

Editing...

of any written work - book, newspaper, newsletter, magazine, journal....anything...has an element of literary ethics. An editor has a responsibility to the author and to the reader. In a newspaper, one of the editor's responsibilities is to see that no sensibilities are upset, no feelings get inflamed, for a newspaper is the ordinary man's window to the world.

Check this out: it was in today's Telegraph - Calcutta -

The mammaries of the state can't feed all of you forever (this is an interpretation of 'What the government is trying to convey)

Sometimes I really do think we've lost all sense of decorum and polish. For us, as it always is in all conditions and circumstances - arrey - ismay itnee badi baat kya hai - or, why make a big thing out of this.....for, for us Indians, nothing matters.....sab chalta hai - everything goes...

Talking about systems...

Complete oral care system - toothpaste

Vertical transportation system - Elevator or lift

More use of words from Angelou...

on the Fillmore Street 5 & Dime store...

'It was an arc-wide shop where dreams hung on plastic stands.'

and again...

'...........the cosmetic counter where lipsticks and nail polish were pink and red and green and blue fruits fallen from a rainbow tree.'

Terrific picture with words!!

Thought-provoking words...

From Maya Angelou's 'A Song Flung Up to Heaven'

She says...

'I thought of human beings....... . According to some scientists, we were born to forever crawl in swamps, but for some unexplained reason we decided to stand erect and, despite gravity's pull and push, to remain standing.'

and she adds: '........I would have to examine the quality in the human spirit that continues to rise despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.'

Yesterday...

was one of those days when my language strings got all jarred. Here are some specimens:

1. KFC menu is increasing throwing up a number of veg items.
2. KFC plans to unleash veg and non-veg items in Indian eating-out marketplace.
3. Replicaded
4. Few rebranding efforts would surprise as the efforts of KFC to walk the line between veg and non-veg food in India.
- these were from the Economic Times

India's biggest cigarette maker is going on a health kick. - Moneycontrol

As par the figure..... - One India

A rather loaded phrase...

captive mediocrity

A state when you are so complacent as you are that  you don't feel the need to make the effort to look outside of your self or your circle

Evocative words...

from Maya Angelou's 'A Song Flung Up to Heaven'

About her son.....'We had lived so close together that ..........I could translate him into my mother language fluently.

Describing a situation that was bad, Angelou says - ......as bad as things are now, they could have been worse and might become worser and even worserer.

About life - Life was waiting on me and it wasn't wise to test its patience.

on Music - I asked for the music, then invited it to enter my body and find the broken and sore places and restore them.

I also want to add into this blog...

convoluted use of words...

My teacher who taught me a course on editing said we should make no compromises on language when we use it in formal situations. Informally we may take liberties, and we do. Language always comes alive when we use it either in the written word or the spoken word. And so, we have to be careful how we use it...

I edit a newsletter, and we cull the day's news from national and international dailies. While some days flow, there are days when I break my head trying to decipher what it is that the paper's editor has reported - and it doesn't help that the clock is ticking away mercilessly to the deadline.

In this blog I also want to share some of these 'difficult' (read strange or absurd) words and phrases/sentences.

Here are two to begin with:

un-disrupted - Business Standard - to express uninterrupted!!

multi-month highs - Times of India - in the context of reporting a high (in a particular commodity) that has been going on for more than one month!!

As I read - too much editing, or too much condensing, or too much trying-to-cram-in-a lot-in-a few-word/words can read rather unpleasantly...

What I want to do...

is to share interesting and unique turns of phrases or usage of words...

I'll begin with this one from Nora Ephron's 'I remember nothing':

Informational cascade - something that is repeated so many times that it becomes true though it isn't.