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.'