Monday, September 3, 2012

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...

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