Odd words explained

Newspapers often use words which send the readers looking for a dictionary.

Hardly ever do they help you understand them - meanings, origin, pronunciation - for the arcane (understood by few) and archaic (very old fashioned) word that are used. In this case, in the judicial order in the Arushi-Hemraj Murder Case.

The Wall Street Journal's India Realtime, picked five arcane words and dealt with them in a simple manner.

The words are: 1) decarcinating,2) beaut damsel, 3) jugulated, 4) flagitious, and 5) fortiori.

You would notice that the spell check does not recognise four of the five!

Read about it here.

Thank you, WSJ.

Timepass for chilling

Each part of the world has contributed words to English language from their repository of their own languages. Indian contribution includes use of some English words differently even if they do not yet find a place in the dictionaries like bandh, cummerbund etc have.

India Real Time of the Wall Street Journal has this interesting but small list of words used in India.

Read it here. It does not include words like backside for back of, for instance, saying 'backside of the building inside of back of building'. Backside is mostly to be used for a person's buttocks.

Words from Chicago

Dictionaries, both printed and online, provide the etymology of words. They are often interesting.

Here is a list of 40 words which originated in Chicago and remain in use.

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/July-2010/Top-40-Chicago-Words-Our-Contributions-to-the-English-Language/

Generally the etymology mentions the language from where it emerged, for instance, French, Latin etc. Here, it is location specific, as close to as a city.

Shooting from the hat

The Indian Express and Financial Express quoted a go-by-rule official, Ashok Khema (IAS, Haryana, often transferred for doing his duty) as saying there are honest politicians and he can name them off the hat. That is a mixed up idiom.

Probably he intended to say off the cuff, meaning straight away, without much effort, impromptu, extemporaneously. But yes, there is something one does by pulling something out of the hat, as if magically. Spring a surprise, as it were.

We may as well recall another expression: shooting from the hip when something is said quickly, instantaneously, as if you are pulling the gun from the holster at the hip and shoot, quickly. 

Brits to shed jargon in official communications

I recall an IAS officer telling me that a road would be 'safe-staged' before traffic was allowed on it. What he meant was that once all tests were done, and the road was declared safe for use, it would be opened to public.

Probably, 'safe-staged' saved words, but to many, it meant  nothing, being new. Fortunately, it did not gain currency.

The civil service of all countries have their own jargon which is aimed more at confusing than providing clarity. Hence, the British Government, it seems, according to a blog, decided to ask its officials to cease and desist from using jargon.

My friend Kiran Thakur, who runs a blog http://mediasceneindia.blogspot.in/ drew attention to the helpful British decision publicized by the newspaper, The Independent, of UK.

Read about it here and have fun.

If you feel up to it, please let us know of the jargon you find in Indian media.

'Grill' when a few question are asked?

Whenever investigating agencies - police, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Enforcement - Bureau, question a person, the preferred word for a headline in the media is "grill", like predictably it would be after Naveen Jindal has a session with the CBI about the coal supplies and alleged bribes to a minister.

"Grill" is to broil on a toaster, inflict torture or question intensely. It is a transitive verb which implies some action which makes the person being questioned at leas wince at the physical pain.

Is use of such a verb appropriate when it comes to big-shots being asked questions? These agencies are known to be polite to this class of people, that is, the politicians. They are known to have acted at the behest of this class of people. Is it to indicate that they have done something more than that the spokespersons tell the media of the grilling when they asked a few question?

Is grill a word like a police and judicial custody is made to appear to be a punishment in themselves?

Any views? Please post a comment.

Upliftment?!

One of the Indianisms is 'upliftment'.

Newspapers don't think twice when they report a minister speaking about improving the status of the poor, the socially deprived. The idea is uplifting, but not the word.

No dictionary, printed or online, has it. Nearest they come to is uplift, a verb, adjective, and a noun. A face is uplifted, be uplifted with reference to the ground, and move someone up on the social scale. The last is where Indians use it, 'upliftment'.

Does it correct because it is used often? Then why has it not entered the dictionaries in decades and more of that usage?

Apparently is it used elsewhere, as in Jamaica. A comment Merriam-Webster online has this: " I have been searching for the word 'upliftment that is commonly used in Jamaica, but it does not appear in the Oxford Dictionary." Nor have I.

Advani 'mutinous'?

Is it right to describe Lal Krishna Advani's recent views and actions 'mutinous'?

But that adjective appears inappropriate in the Advani context because he has been, since the formation of Bharatiya Janata Party been a leader even if he did not hold a formal position. He has been the elder of the party.

Technically, he differed and quit from the several party fora which makes him a dissenter, if even a lonely one. Aleader does not rebel of mutiny; he only leads.

The Hindu, in its editorial on June 13 used the adjective. A mutinous person is one who is willfully disobedient. Here, he had objections and the adjective does not sit apt on him.

Whistleblower or leaker?

A 'whistleblower is a person who brings to light something illegal or dishonest done by an individual or an organisation. It is considered a honest thing to do.

Bradley Manning who downloaded all details of diplomatic communications to wiki-leaks was described as being one - then and now.

Now, Edward Snowdenn, who has brought to light the manner in which the United States was snooping on all electronic communications, via The Guardian, was labelled a whistleblower by the newspaper.

But not so the Associated Press, a news cooperative. It wants him to be identified as a 'leaker' or a 'source'. A memo by the AP's standards editor - who determines style of writing, said, it was part of their "general effort to avoid labels and instead describe behaviour". .

Read about it here on www.huffingtonpost.com. The news organisation, AP, is okay with other terms, like he "leaked, exposed, or revealed classified information".

Another piece on the huffingtonpost goes to the extent of saying that Snoden is neither a hero nor a traitor, but a criminal. Is that the reason a newsorganisation decide on calling a whistleblower a leaker?

What according to you does this nuanced change from whistleblower to other descriptions mean?

'Inadequate overhaul'

'Overhaul', as is commonly understood, is taking things apart and putting them together. It does not imply any half-measure.

The dictionaries have this meaning for overhaul: to dismantle in order to make repairs. As a verb, it is to take apart and then putting them together. Merriam-Webster has this: to repair, to renovate, remake, revise or renew thoroughly.

Those who don't bother about the nuances, overhaul suggests remaking or renewing thoroughly.

So this headline for an editorial (called 'leader' within the newspaper, as does The Economist) in The Hindu looked odd: Inadequate overhaul. But it was not, for what it referred to was inadequate response of the Archaeological Survey of India to the issue of preserving monuments.  The paper meant, what was being done was not enough. What was being done was not comprehensive enough.

It is a happy thing that we find something that sounds odd but is actually correct usage.

Eating words

English is quite a pun language; one can have fun because of the puns. But an entire headline which first startles and then explains is this on pix11.com:

Spelling Bee winner eats his winning word for the 1st time: K-n-a-i-d-e-l, knaidel

It all about how the US Spelling Bee winner, Arvind Mahankali, who spelt knaildel correctly and bagged  US30,000 and then ordered one in a restaurant since he had never eaten it ever, being a vegetarian. The restaurant had to make one for him.

He was not eating his word in the sense, he was not owning up to a mistake which is what the idiom means. He was eating the soup. The headline draws you to it, especially, if you had read Chidananda Rajghatta's dispatch about how the spelling was disputed. The venerable New York Times had written about it.

Mahankali was conceding his mistake, you'd think. Far from it; he was tasting it!

The idiom means, "if you eat your words, you accept publicly that you were wrong abut something you said", according to www.usingenglish.com and "to have to take back one's statements; to confess that one's predictions were wrong", according to idioms.thefreedictionary.com
.
He was only eating the soup. By the way, there is a dispute - or lack of clarity - on whether soup is eaten or drunk.

Interestingly, the above piece was posted on Facebook by Chidananda Rajghatta.this blog had a post on his dispatch in The Times of India on the dispute, which if read now, would help understand the whole thing better.

Large English-speaking population, but shy of spelling

India too has a spelling contest is apparently not such a rage in India as it is in the United States where the 86th edition of the National Spelling Bee was held last week, and a student of Indian descent won the top honours.

Indian Americans have been winning it for the past six years.

Around 11 million apply to participate in the US while in India, 2,50,000 students between age nine and 14 did this year to participate in the contest run by HDFC since 2009.

An official who runs it was quoted by Wall Street Journal's India Real Time saying that Indian schools "don't consider spelling competitions as important academically and put a greater focus on other subjects".

"Exceptional" at science and mathematics, Indian students are "not as good at English" and their "vocabulary is not very developed and less importance is put on the understanding of English than other subjects".

But then, isn't India ahead of others in the business outsourcing business (BPO) and such I-T enabled services because it has the largest English-speaking population?

By the way, such contests are orthographical. Look up the dictionary for orthographic it is not often used here. 

Not quite kosher

Read this dispatch from Chidanand Rajghatta, who writes for the Times of India from the United States. He has an uncanny gift for turning phrases, and irreverence,but this one takes the cake.

It is about how some words spelt out by Arvind Mahankali who won this year's US Spelling Bee were acceptable to to the judges but not others.

The thing to note is the use of words, apparently or Yiddish origin which is used by Americans but are unfamiliar to Indian readers. They have been marked bold by this blogger.

"Bee-winning spelling not kosher
Chidanand Rajghatta

Washington:

    You just can’t take their word for it. 
    The buzz is that the US National Spelling Bee and its 2013 titlist Arvind Mahankali might not have been right on the matzo ball when it came to the winning word on Thursday. That’s the kvetch from Yiddish mavens cited in the New York Times, produced from the home of the largest Jewish diaspora in the world (New York City has more Jews than Jerusalem.) 
    Mahankali spelled out kn-a-i-d-e-l, a German word of Yiddish origin — which is a dough or dumpling that Jewish cooks put in chicken soup — to win the $30,000 prize ahead of 281 finalists. The Spelling Bee judges accepted the way he spelled it because that’s the way it’s laid out in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, bible for all worker bees and drones. 
    Merriam-Webster officials defended their choice of spelling as the most common variant of the word from a language that is about as alive as Sanskrit in India, and is written in the Hebrew, not Roman, alphabet. 
    But linguists at the Yiddish Scientific Institution YIVO say that’s not so kosher. Their preference is kneydl, and they nudged the NYT into the etymological shemozzle, suggesting the Bee graders may have been schnookered by the Indian boy — or goy, a Yiddish word for someone not of Jewish faith. 
    On Saturday, the hoary paper, in a needling article, reported with considerable chutzpah that not only is Mahankali, an eighth-grader from Queens, “son of immigrants from southern India,” but also “he has never eaten an actual knaidel.” Most reader responses did not accept the spiel though. 
    “'Why are words that are not English, particularly words that do not use the Roman alphabet, like Yiddish, used in a spelling bee?” one reader asked. 
    It was not the first time such a glitch was occurring at this year’s championship. 
    In an earlier round when Nikitha Chandran from Florida proved to judges that they had wrongly disqualified her for spelling the word “viruscide” the way she did, and that it was the third variant of the “viricide” and “virucide” — the only two entries in the spelling bee dictionary, they agreed and corrected their error, and Nikitha was added to the list of 41 semifinalists."

Now you know how, if journalists use strange words, the readers are at sea. One cannot turn to the dictionaries every time a strange word is used.

I have read some of these words, and wondered what they meant, in some American pulp fiction. 

Is or was?

This blog attempts to look at the usage of English in daily life which also includes the media. It has to a lot to do with grammar. Therefore this question:

Shouldn't the is, the third person singular present tense have been avoided and the singular past was employed in this headline in Moneylife, Someone knew Narayana Murthy is coming back and traded on it?

It is like this, If he was to come back, I would welcome it. If not Infosys would have to settle for what was its fate.

Having said this, Moneylife is a useful, brave journal.

Bombayite or Mumbaikar?

There was a time when a Bombay resident was a Bombaywallah or a Bambaiyya. Since the city reverted to its non-anglicized origual name, Mumbai, such persons are called Mumbaikar. In Marathi, the 'kar' is normally a suffix to a place-name which means 'resident of'.

My ancestors are said to have been residents of Vijapur, which made us Vijapurkars. All residents of Thane, regardless of their surnames, thus also qualify to be Thanekars, like all Pune residents, Punekars.

Most newspapers, even English language ones, have taken to the use of 'Mumbaikar' but some bloggers, as this, use 'Bombayite'. Some prefer Mumbaiite. The Hindustan Times has also taken to it almost routinely. Which means, there is no consistency.

This brings us to the use of two other usages: 'Andhraite' and 'Keralite' when referring to people from the two states, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. To my understanding, Andhra Pradesh is a region (pradesh) where Andhras live and in Kerala, people who speak Malayalee, and therefore are Malayalees, reside. If this logic were wrong, then people of Bengal (I am on West Bengal) would be Bengalites.

Tamilnadu was the name coined for the region where Tamil is spoken and by the same logic, Odisha for the region where Odiya is the language. Like Gujarat is the state of Gujaratis. All this has to do with the linguistic basis for forming the state, the first being Andhra Pradesh, the region of Andhras who speak Telugu. It is a surprise it did not become Telugu Pradesh or Telugunadu.

It is possible I may be wrong. If there are any contrarian views, hey are welcome here. But do take the trouble to convey it.

'Decide' is forerunner to a 'final decision'?

You 'decide' on doing something. Is that a prelude to a 'final decision' to come later?

A blurb to an interview of K Keshava Rao, a Congress leader in Andhra Pradesh says "in this interview with Rediff.com 's Vicky Najappa, Rao says that he has decided to join the TRS, but would wait until Thursday night before taking a final decision"

I suppose when you decide, it is final. Or you are only considering deciding to do something.

Read the interview and it would emerge that the blurb could have said Rao was edging toward a decision but dependent on how the powers that be in Congress and the Government respond to a demand for quick decision on formation of Telangana.

It is equivocation containing  threat to the party for its dilly-dallying.

We need to decide, finally, how we use the word without a qualifier.

Comptroller - the 'p'?

With Vinod Rai, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) having retired, we are less likely to read and hear about that office for few, even if in a Constitutional office, attract such attention as he had because of his report on G2 telephony and the presumptive loss of 1.7 lakh crore.

It was so often used that CAG, an abbreviation became the norm for referring to the office, even in the first reference breaking a journalistic norm, that very few had to grapple with Comptroller, with a p. How is it pronounced? We in India do bring that p when uttering it. Do we need to?

We needn't.The Merriam-Webster online dictionary's audio facility excludes that p. Try it here. The freedictionary which provides audio support for both British and American pronunciation too skips the p. Click on the Union Jack.

The Oxford Dictionaries, online, explains that its origin is "late 5th century: variant of CONTROLLER, by erroneous association with French compte 'calculation' or its source, later Latin comptus"

What? Come again!

I came across this in an article on the editorial page of The Times of India (May 28, 2013):

"The sum of many publications (is) bigger than the sum of their parts."

It needs the reader to pause a while and unravel what the writers, Kaushik  Murali and Saubhik Chakrabarti, meant to convey.

Obviously, it is a take off of the expression, ascribed to Aristotle, which is, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts". A website, sum.com, explains it thus: "When you add together the parts, the total value will be larger than if you had counted up the individual components."

It is a holism, a doctrine that a system may have properties over and above those of its parts and their organisation. Like, for instance, a human body has a value higher than the value of each of the components that make up a human body.

But the "sum of many publications (is) bigger than the sum of their parts"? Not easy to take in. Not very comfortable for a reader, even if it were a correct expression.

Army and 'order'

Organisations sometimes need outside help to better run them.

Some appoint consultants, others commission studies to find flaws in the way things are done and then look to changing procedures.

But when Indian Army wants to speed up the process of selection of officers and make it transparent, it just orders a study. In this case, the Indian Army orders a study by the Indian Institute of Management - Ahmadabad.

Fortunately, the IIM-A was not ordered; The Army chief ordered someone, apparently down the line, to have a study done.

Read this headline on The Hindu website om May 24, 2013 night: Army orders an IIM study to review officer selection.

We don't know what the print edition would prefer as the headline.

It is not the work of the headline writer. The text itself speaks of the order. 

An organisation which depends on order for itself efficiency, no other word would do!

In the second paragraph, however, there is an asked. Seems rather out of step, doesn't it?

Terrorism or murder?

Words have a purpose. That is why they are used. Indiscretion in the choice of words employed could convey an entirely different picture than intended. Carelessness can be with disastrous consequences.

Tristan Stewart-Robertson, a Glasgow-based journalist who writes a column for Firstpost.com deals with the use of the word 'terrorist' in describing the alleged killers of a person in Woolwich the other day.

His argument is that in the context of wild attacks anywhere which are now routinely classified as 'terror' and the attackers as 'terrorist(s)' in the media could well be a huge error. A murder could be plain murder, and a terror attack quite something else.

His piece can be read here.

In this context, when we speak or write of the sway of bahubalis in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, gangsters elsewhere, including the local goons who just like to keep the areas around them under their thumbs, are also terrorists. They were covered under a law, Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act. These days we use the term terror in an entirely different context, to explain the attacks on Mumbai, the attacks on the World Trade Centre, especially after the rise of al-Qaida.

Stewart-Robertson is clear - don't call a murder a terror attack.

Talk to or talk with?

Moneylife, a periodical which also updates news on its website, used this expression:

Phaneesh Murthy, "speaking with reporters, said" whatever he said when conveying his side of the story on the sexual harassment allegations against him (till a court convicts him, we shall qualify it with 'allegation' unlike newspapers and television).

Read the relevant third paragraph in this link.

The question is, does one talk to reporters or talk with?

My understanding is 'talk to' is an Americanism. 'Talk to' is is English English, so to say. The second is used, some blogs explain, when a person is engaged in conveying information to more than one person, as reporters (plural here). But when two persons are engaged in a conversation, which is an exchange of information or views, it has to be talk with. Aren't reporters asking questions and the person responding, making it a conversation? Perhaps  it is putting a fine point to it.

This blog invites comments, and welcomes even a correction.

The spoken word - not just errors, also biases

When we deal with usage of words, it tends to be of written words, But there are spoken words too on news television which also are grammatically incorrect or are misused, sometimes not conveying much.

Madhu Trehan, who does a weekly analysis of television news in her weekly offering Clothesline on www.newslaundry.com finds that choice of words convey biases.

Watch this.

But Trehan, does one put them to dry before or after wringing them dry?

A letter and mixed feelings

There is an interesting item in today's The Times of India about how it took a letter mailed in Anand, Gujarat to reach the addressee in Navsari 31 years - yes, you read it right. The two cities are about 200 km apart.

When received, its  recipient was 'grateful' and also 'shocked'. When he read it, he was 'thrilled' as well. He also said, "I appreciate" the postal department for "preserving the letter" and then delivering.

Gratitude and shock don't go together, thrill does. Appreciation and shock? No. If the letter was well preserved, then, as the item says, why was it in tatters? If the postal official did not know where it was all these years, how does it get thanked for preserving something it did not even know was with them?

But 31 years is a long time in the life of a letter in transit. The sender did not remember why he wrote that letter but the addressee now knows. The gentleman from Anand had referred a patient to his friend, an eye specialist. We don;t know what happened to the patient and his eyesight.

The strangest part is at the end of the news item. The postal official says he was "surprised as to where the letter had been lying all these years". The reporter could easily have told him, "Sir, it was on its way".

Know your English, but she has no opposite for 'sin'

The Hindu has a reputation for good English. It has been said time and again that one improves on his or her English language skills by reading that newspaper. This may not necessarily hold good for every printed item in the newspaper these days, but it most certainly it is the case with its editorial pages.

For long, the newspaper has been doing another service of a weekly column, Know your English, published every Monday. The columnist S Upendran responds to questions from readers and explains the meaning and usage of words and expressions.

This column is printed regularly but in some corner of the newspaper's Monday pull-outs. Navigating to it is quite a task. Therefore this blog would, as and when it is able to spot one, provide the hyperlink to it, as it has here.

In this Know your English on May 6, 2013, Upendran explains the difference between effeminate and womanish. He also tells you, "Most Indian languages have an opposite" for sin, like punyam, punya, etc.but English does not have an exact opposite. Many people make do with words like 'virtue, 'grace'., etc. as opposites".

Now Mr Upendran may want to tell that while a comma precedes the etc., should it be followed by another comma? Etc., being an abbreviation of et cetera, the Latin words for so on and so forth, should invariably end with a full stop but a comma could follow?

Railway or Railways Minister?

A huge network which carries people and freight across India is the Indian Railways, that is Railway with an 's' attached. Like the plural of the word.

The minister in charge of that department is almost always referred to as the Railway minister. The 's' is missing.

Shouldn't it be the Railways Minister?

The annual budget he or she presents to the Parliament is, again, most often, the Railway Budget, not the Railways Budget. 

Even the Indian Railways uses it as a singular on its portal where the budget is uploaded, and headlined the 2013 budget as the 'Railway Budget' - the 's' missing. Some newspapers trim it to Rail Budget.

However, some newspapers, do use it in the correct form but only occasionally.

Makes one wonder, which is right - the one in popular usage or the way the Indian railways calls itself?

This confusion is confounded when the entity calls itself 'Bharatiya Rail' as its Hindi version.

There is much confusion at the official level itself. The body, which was later registered under the Indian Companies Act, came to be under the Indian Railways (yes, with that 's'). However, in an amendment to that Act in 1989, the law-makers used both railways and Railway.

The head of the unit that provides the oversight on safety is the Commissioner, Railway Safety, and each of its several zones are only a railway. There is the Central Railway, the Western Railway etc.

Interestingly, the top group that administers the entire network is not the Railways Board but Railway Board.

Civic body, no civic sense, but Sackrifice?

Headlines have to say a lot in few words, space being a constraint. The idea is to attract attention to a news item and them draw the reader into the text underneath it.

The Times of India has in the past used puns in some headlines, as if they were all written by Bachi Karkaria. She is a punster and read this to estimate her incorrigible capacity for playing with words. She writes a regular column, Erratica.

Yesterday's (May 10, 2013) one headline in that newspaper deserves an applause. Mumbai's city government was told by a judge of the Bombay High Court that the civic body that "you are not behaving as the municipal corporation for the maintenance of Mumbai, but as the municipal corporation for the destruction of Mumbai".

Of course, what Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud said was not part of an order or a judgement but a part of the proceedings on a public interest litigation (PIL).

Instead of the trite stuff like 'Judge raps' the civic body etc., the headline said this: High court slams BMC for lacking civic sense. A civic body without civic sense.

Compare it with this headline, Sackrifice for survival, in DNA, of May 11, 2013, for a story on how Railways Minister, Pawan Bansal had 'sacrificed' a goat to remain in office but had to finally quit when asked to by the Prime Minister following a bribery scam involving Bansal's nephew. It was a combination of 'sack' and sacrifice'.

It has to be noted that we don't know if the goat was sacrificed or fed since the media - newspapers, television and social media - speak of both.

It rings false, but such headlines, such coined words always do.

Do losses increase or widen?

Profits remain steady, increase or decrease. Adjectives can be used to describe its pace of change dependent on, well, the pace of change. It can be a slow, steady rise, a sharp surge, or even a gentle, soft curve on the charts or even a point where there is no profit or no loss.

Losses, whether slow or quick, can be traumatic for any business, and one just has some or heavy losses but these are subjective. They can be big or small.

But have you heard of 'wide losses'? If you haven't, then read this headline in the Business Standard of May 7, 2013: Adani Power's losses widen to Rs 586 crore in Q4.

Of course, losses can increase too, that is, what was a loss in revenue or profits yesterday could be have some more added to it  today, thus increasing it.

"Wide loss(es)" is, however, not entirely wrong, provided it is properly used to describe something else. For instance, If every other scrip or a a sector on the stock market slide on a given day, then it is indeed a 'wide loss'. Not otherwise.

A good example of the use of 'wide loss' is in Financial Times, (February 4, 2013) which can be read here.It would suffice to read the headline and the first paragraph where losses in all major 10 sectors were reported.

'Boston bomber' is charged, but remains a 'suspect'

This blog likes to look generally at the usage of words in the media, mostly print. Mostly, among them, newspapers.

That takes us to the use of the word 'suspect' in stories dealing with news about crimes. In this particular case, the Boston Bombings.

The latest, and a fine example, is its use in a headline by The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper. When referring to Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the younger of the two brothers, he is a 'suspect', in a New York Times syndicated piece.

In the text, he is mentioned as having been 'charged', though the 'suspect' is missing in the NYT's headline. It points to the man being already 'charged' and of the on-going investigations. In both the newspapers, he is prefixed with the honorific, 'Mr.'. This is a practice even in The Economist - pointed, but polite, courtesies to even suspects and, yes, to convicts as well.

Indian newspaper could refer to Dzhokar Tsarnaev as 'an accused' since he has been charged. Once he is, if he is, convicted, then he becomes a convict. But the tendency in Indian media is to refer to any person picked up for suspicion becomes an accused, an unfortunate tradition.

The television news networks are worse: a man could well be tried well before legally being charged. These days, even hanging is described as the best punishment in the trial by television.

Elsewhere, the law enforcers look for the suspect first. here, we look for the 'accused', even if unidentified by name.

It is all to do with the finer points of a situation. The implications of a suspect being let off but being accused of a crime in the media are not understood. The police may be poor in use of words, the media needn't be.

Huge bribe case only a 'slur'?

Today's Business Standard"s lead headline is Another corruption slur on UPA.

That, even as one case of graft after another is emerging from the woodwork. It is no more a shock, no more a scandal, and having become quite routine, even the newspaper's headline writer seems to have had his pen dulled.

A slur, among other things, is only a disparaging remark which hurts one's reputation. And what is the UPA's reputation? Breeder of corruption and protector of the tribe of the corrupt.

So, in a lighter vein, to say the UPA is not corrupt would be against its reputation.

If you read the entire story, you would see that it is, aptly, only a "latest controversy". Latest, yes, but only a controversy?

Words say a lot, don't they?

Status quo and status quo ante

This is about status quo.

A headline in The Hindu on April 23 had this headline, Revert to status quo, India tells China.

Today, DNA slugged a story on Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid's China visit, thus: India wants the platoon of Chinese troops, who have erected their tents in that area, to pull back and restore the status quo.

On March 23 The Hindu had used status quo in a headline.

This usage is incorrect. Once something changes, it is not status quo, and when it has to be taken back to what it was, then it is to status quo ante. Merriam-Webster says status quo ante "s the state of affairs that existed previously". 

What India is dealing with is the status quo - about the here and now - of Chinese troops on Indian side. If they leave, then they situation would not be to status quo but to status quo ante. Status quo, as the same dictionary says, is "the existing state of affairs".

Who was chasing and who was captured on CCTV?

What does this headline, Sleuths in trail of men caught on Boston video, in The Times of India (April 19, 2013), tell you?

For one, it could mean the detectives who were going after the Boston bombers were caught on camera. Or, the sleuths were chasing the bombers whose images were captured by the videos by CCTV in the area. Going by the news item of which it was the headline, the second is correct.

The headline and the text of the news item can be read here.

News headlines in print are difficult to write for they have to explain the news in brief and also attract attention of the reader. They have to be concise and pack a lot.

J-school students and rookies who write news are often told that the headline is, generally, the summing up of the first paragraph which in professional jargon is a 'lead' or 'lede', the latter in vogue in the newsrooms in the USA. The lead or lede has to be a summing up of the entire news item.

Space available for the headline, depending on the importance of the item relative to others on the page and also its architecture, forces the headline writer to compress it as much as possible and yet be informative but could lead, as it has in this case, to confusion. It could even be hilarious.

During my college days, the equivalent of today's junior college was Intermediate and popularly, Inter. When new textbooks were introduced for these courses, the Deccan Chronicle, then confined only to the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad came out with a gem: New textbooks for Intercourse. The space for the headline did not leave room for it to be in two words!

Any examples you would like to share?

'Apropos' the 'storm'

Did Jorge Heine in his The death of  poet in The Hindu need to start off 'Apropos of' when apropos is a preposition which actually means with respect to? Or Concerning.

Earlier, a headline in the same newspaper need not have used the 'into' - it was Protesters storm into Presidency University, attack students. A mob, whether of the CPM or the TMC variety, just storm.

Comments are invited.

On and off camera

While telecasting its sting on sale of medical seats, CNN-IBN kept flashing the statement in its 9 pm news slot that 'doctors said on camera'. It should have been 'doctors caught on camera'. Those who say anything 'on camera' are doing so with full knowledge of the camera being on. The anchor was Rajdeep Sardesai.

The missing 'erstwhile'

This blog's intent is to look at the use or misuse of words and expressions in journalism but here is an exception. It is about non-use of a word - erstwhile. And the confusion it causes.

The Hindu's news item on April 1, 2013 failed to use 'erstwhile' when talking about the former ruler of Bastar giving the impression that in a democratic republic which India is, royalty with titles exist. The only place where its use was not required - and not used - is in the fourth paragraph because the report recalls the past when India did have kings.

It is another matter that people in several regions, including cities like Jaipur, do look at the former rulers as royalty and refer to them as His/Her Highness but for a newspaper to treat them as royalty is ill-advised.

The use of 'Bastars' to identify the people who belong to a region is interesting.

All comments are welcome.

When use of 'out' when 'in' would have done.

In a news item on March 4, 2013, The Hindu said this: "They got two children born out of their wedlock". That was not the newspaper had meant to convey.

The report was about a couple who quarreled and then resumed their marital life after which they had two children. That is very much within the wedlock.

It is possible that the writer literally translated what is said for the same thing in any Indian language - it happened from out of it, or because of it. The out here is not the same as saying, for instance, out of frustration, he screamed.

That error could mean a lot to the couple. The man in has been identified by name, about how a criminal case against him following his wife's complaint - fortunately not named - led to a criminal case. That led to denial of a job for which he otherwise qualified.

We do not know if the person complained to the newspaper or threatened it with a suit because children out of wedlock reflected adversely to their reputation. The Reader' Editor corrected it in his Corrections and clarifications column on March 7.

There is another issue with the construction of that unintended mischievous sentence in the report. Why "got two children born out of their wedlock? Why not merely the two children (if it were really so, and I am pushing it here only  for argument's sake) born out of wedlock?