A tale of an editor

Sometimes, the best way to write is neither with prosaic structure nor with the free-flowing lucidity of poetry but in a way as to conspicuously avoid either of them.

Either form has its demands; prose famously requires the content to be specific, or it doesn't read well, whereas poetry that is long sentences broken down with periods reads like it has been forced. Apparently, volition matters.

If I were to grade the degree to which ideas have been presented cogently in either format, prose would score a 10 and poetry would score a 1. You get the picture.

However, the issue arises when the writer notices that either form of scripture (non-theologically speaking) requires the cogency-grades to be uniform within the piece. When a piece of poetry becomes suddenly specific or when a piece of prose becomes suddenly abstract, and then gives way to a change of ideological concentration, it feels as if the writer him/herself does not have a clear picture of the message being conveyed.

It's only a surprise that so many writers have not embraced the free-flowing style of writing that does not make any such demands as cogency and "the big picture", among other things, because then it means that they know what they're writing about.

However, when writing as if playing a text-based RPG, writing in my opinion transcends the form of being a tool of conveyance to being a lens through which the reader is able to view the writer's thought process. That way, the dialogue is more personal and concentric.

Most of the time, I don't know what am writing. I put pen-to-paper - or the more likely fingers-to-keyboard - and keep writing until I think I might be saying something. When I think I've put down the decisive punch-line, I scroll back to the beginning of the piece and begin editing.

Essentially, it is a detestation of editing. Editing is the formalized sleeve of commercialism that cloaks literary expression. With editing, periods, commas and, regrettably, apostrophes become really important quickly (there's the regret because of the Marxism question). I think they're really rather necessary, like in this piece.

Even so, I'm using it because I know the role they play in the expressionist form of things: I use them because I know what really the apostrophe does, what really the comma can do, and what the period never did. Such an understanding of things, I think, must be internalized at fundamental and essentially pedagogic levels.

When a piece is edited and then published - in a newspaper or in a blog - it reads as if the interaction is being actively limited to the content matter. However, I like it all delimited. Like in this piece.

Like in this piece, indeed.

*

Looks I've delivered the decisive punch-line. Now to get down to some editing.

*

Sometimes, the best way to write is neither with prosaic structure nor the free-flowing lucidity of poetry but in a way as to conspicuously avoid either of them. Either form has its demands; prose famously requires the content to be specific, or it doesn't read well, whereas poetry that is long sentences broken down with periods reads like it has been forced. Apparently, volition matters. If I were to grade the degree to which ideas have been presently cogently in either format, prose would score a 10 and poetry would score a 1. You get the picture.

However, the issue arises when the writer notices that either form of scripture (non-theologically speaking) requires the cogency-grades to be uniform within the piece. When a piece of poetry becomes suddenly specific or when a piece of prose becomes suddenly abstract, and then gives way to a change of ideological concentration, it feels as if the writer him/herself does not have a clear picture of the message being conveyed.

It's only a surprise that so many writers have not embraced the free-flowing style of writing that does not make any such demands as cogency and "the big picture", among other things, because then it means that they know what they're writing about. However, when writing as if playing a text-based RPG, writing in my opinion transcends the form of being a tool of conveyance to being a lens through which the reader is able to view the writer's thought process. That way, the dialogue is more personal and concentric.

Most of the time, I don't know what am writing. I put pen-to-paper – or the more likely fingers-to-keyboard – and keep writing until I think I might be saying something. When I think I've put down the decisive punch-line, I scroll back to the beginning of the piece and begin editing. Essentially, it is a detestation of editing. Editing is the formalized sleeve of commercialism that cloaks literary expression. With editing, periods, commas and, regrettably, apostrophes become really important quickly (there's the regret because of the Marxism question). I think they're really rather necessary. Even so, I'm using it because I know the role they play in the expressionist form of things: I use them because I know what really the apostrophe does, what really the comma can do, and what the period never did. Such an understanding of things, I think, must be internalized at fundamental and essentially pedagogic levels. When a piece is edited and then published - in a newspaper or in a blog - it reads as if the interaction is being actively limited to the content matter. However, I like it all delimited.

Apparently, volition not only matters but also shows.

*

That was simple. Only had to remove the "Like in this piece" bits and group the sentences.

*

What, haven't you met a hypocrite before?

A tale of an editor

Sometimes, the best way to write is neither with prosaic structure nor with the free-flowing lucidity of poetry but in a way as to conspicuously avoid either of them.

Either form has its demands; prose famously requires the content to be specific, or it doesn't read well, whereas poetry that is long sentences broken down with periods reads like it has been forced. Apparently, volition matters.

If I were to grade the degree to which ideas have been presented cogently in either format, prose would score a 10 and poetry would score a 1. You get the picture.

However, the issue arises when the writer notices that either form of scripture (non-theologically speaking) requires the cogency-grades to be uniform within the piece. When a piece of poetry becomes suddenly specific or when a piece of prose becomes suddenly abstract, and then gives way to a change of ideological concentration, it feels as if the writer him/herself does not have a clear picture of the message being conveyed.

It's only a surprise that so many writers have not embraced the free-flowing style of writing that does not make any such demands as cogency and "the big picture", among other things, because then it means that they know what they're writing about.

However, when writing as if playing a text-based RPG, writing in my opinion transcends the form of being a tool of conveyance to being a lens through which the reader is able to view the writer's thought process. That way, the dialogue is more personal and concentric.

Most of the time, I don't know what am writing. I put pen-to-paper - or the more likely fingers-to-keyboard - and keep writing until I think I might be saying something. When I think I've put down the decisive punch-line, I scroll back to the beginning of the piece and begin editing.

Essentially, it is a detestation of editing. Editing is the formalized sleeve of commercialism that cloaks literary expression. With editing, periods, commas and, regrettably, apostrophes become really important quickly (there's the regret because of the Marxism question). I think they're really rather necessary, like in this piece.

Even so, I'm using it because I know the role they play in the expressionist form of things: I use them because I know what really the apostrophe does, what really the comma can do, and what the period never did. Such an understanding of things, I think, must be internalized at fundamental and essentially pedagogic levels.

When a piece is edited and then published - in a newspaper or in a blog - it reads as if the interaction is being actively limited to the content matter. However, I like it all delimited. Like in this piece.

Like in this piece, indeed.

*

Looks I've delivered the decisive punch-line. Now to get down to some editing.

*

Sometimes, the best way to write is neither with prosaic structure nor the free-flowing lucidity of poetry but in a way as to conspicuously avoid either of them. Either form has its demands; prose famously requires the content to be specific, or it doesn't read well, whereas poetry that is long sentences broken down with periods reads like it has been forced. Apparently, volition matters. If I were to grade the degree to which ideas have been presently cogently in either format, prose would score a 10 and poetry would score a 1. You get the picture.

However, the issue arises when the writer notices that either form of scripture (non-theologically speaking) requires the cogency-grades to be uniform within the piece. When a piece of poetry becomes suddenly specific or when a piece of prose becomes suddenly abstract, and then gives way to a change of ideological concentration, it feels as if the writer him/herself does not have a clear picture of the message being conveyed.

It's only a surprise that so many writers have not embraced the free-flowing style of writing that does not make any such demands as cogency and "the big picture", among other things, because then it means that they know what they're writing about. However, when writing as if playing a text-based RPG, writing in my opinion transcends the form of being a tool of conveyance to being a lens through which the reader is able to view the writer's thought process. That way, the dialogue is more personal and concentric.

Most of the time, I don't know what am writing. I put pen-to-paper – or the more likely fingers-to-keyboard – and keep writing until I think I might be saying something. When I think I've put down the decisive punch-line, I scroll back to the beginning of the piece and begin editing. Essentially, it is a detestation of editing. Editing is the formalized sleeve of commercialism that cloaks literary expression. With editing, periods, commas and, regrettably, apostrophes become really important quickly (there's the regret because of the Marxism question). I think they're really rather necessary. Even so, I'm using it because I know the role they play in the expressionist form of things: I use them because I know what really the apostrophe does, what really the comma can do, and what the period never did. Such an understanding of things, I think, must be internalized at fundamental and essentially pedagogic levels. When a piece is edited and then published - in a newspaper or in a blog - it reads as if the interaction is being actively limited to the content matter. However, I like it all delimited.

Apparently, volition not only matters but also shows.

*

That was simple. Only had to remove the "Like in this piece" bits and group the sentences.

*

What, haven't you met a hypocrite before?

No Candy For Right. Lesser Candy For Wrong.

Enough has been said over the last 10 years about the deluge of information on the web, and on the TV, the radio and the papers. All of it has contributed – one way or another – to change the way we look at the world around us; significant bits of it have even gone on to dictate newer with which we can interact with it. Unsurprisingly, however, there is also in place a different protocol, an upgraded one, that includes a new set of mistakes we could commit, a new set of implications and an altogether new rewards program, speaking as such, for not committing those mistakes in the first place.

Amongst them, there is a certain “mistake profile” that strategically underlies a lot of mistakes committed by unifying them with one principle: “doing it right makes no difference, doing it wrong makes a world of it”, and this kind of mistake has become more common; so common, in fact, that in some institutions, of investigations and reportage to be specific, they have attained the critical pedestal of being called systematic simply because they are not corrected even if exposed glaringly.

[caption id="attachment_317" align="aligncenter" width="386" caption="The Indian division of CNN"][/caption]

Commas once held the privileged position of inducing the most of such mistakes in writing. Using the commas in the right place leaves the reader with a smooth flow of thought, although he or she would ultimately take away the point being made at the end of the reading session. However, once the writer uses a comma in the wrong place, that sudden jerk in the flow of thought leaves the reader only with a dissonance that lasts the whole time – and he or she is bound to leave without giving a damn about your ideas. So also in reportage: just today, I was watching CNN-IBN cover the story of the Indian Navy capturing a pirate vessel off the coast of “Lakshwadeep”. If the presenter had pronounced it right, it would have gone a very short distance, if at all, in corroborating the care taken by the presenter to pronounce it correct. However, the moment she pronounced it wrong, it gave away a sense of journalistic nonchalance - especially when there is no hurry associated with covering the piece.

As long as the media is under the scanner, there is a critical difference between “showing” and “telling” that needs to be discussed. In order to understand this, consider the genre of creative writing: when such a piece is being constructed, the author needs to state something to the reader, not declare it. Similarly, facts need to be presented separately wherever possible, and not as cause and effect. This ensures the utmost neutrality even when an extremely suggestive event is unfolding. Such is the difference between statement and declaration. I principally address the contexts of writing and reporting first because they address a larger audience and quickly. However, there are other industries that face significant challenges in the long run because they didn’t look before they leapt.

---

The writer, at this point, was struck by a writers’ block arrow and regrets announcing that the article is done.

Clean Writing For... Geniuses

There are enough articles out there that tell you how to write. Today, I'm going to tell you how NOT to write, especially how NOT to write something that is bound to frustrate the shit out of the reader.

[caption id="attachment_106" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="That definitely doesn't read right."][/caption]

We'll go through this in a series of points because I don't have the patience (for obvious reasons) to give you an introduction on bad writing, you have enough examples - and if you're around 20 years of age, you probably creating an example in an SMS message or a chat-window right now.

1. Periods (".") are important because they end sentences. They provide an invaluable break in the flow of thought in what you're writing. If you don't use this particular little dot, what you're writing looks like you've thrown it up - literally. Words don't deserve that.


2. An ellipsis is three dots in a row, one after another, without a space in between, like this: "...". That wasn't so hard, was it? Dot. Dot. Dot! It stands for either "to be continued" or "some text has been left out here because I think it's unimportant". Whenever you want to put that thought into the reader's head, you use the ellipsis. You shouldn't use it if the BOTH of us know what's coming next NOR in the middle of a sentence.


3. I'm not too particular about this one, but try capitalizing the first letters of your sentences and any names. The world's not going to end if you don't, but try it out, it could give what you're writing a classy look, like you're particular about things. I know, you're going to be put down as an intellectual dweeb for that, but when it comes to writing, things work differently.


4. I am QUITE sure none of you use Notepad or Wordpad to write these days. You either use MS WORD, that application that Mac users have or inside your browser, and I am QUITE sure that none of you still use IE6 - it's either Firefox, Chrome or that browser Mac users have. All three of them, note, have an add-on for checking the spelling of what you're putting down. In fact, they come with it when you install them. This is just to tell you that writing like that doesn't make you... "cool".


5. Stop using the word "like". Seriously. Use it only when you know what a simile is. A simile is like a metaphor.


6. Commas are beyond this world in their purpose. Please feel free to use them abundantly. You know, when you're writing to someone and you have no way of telling them when you're pausing and when you're not, a comma comes to the rescue, bold as it is. People will invoke a pause in what they're reading when they come across a comma. It's on my list of top 10 inventions of all time.


7. When you've learned how to use a period, you might be interested in the return button on the keyboard. When you press it, you get a paragraph, just like that, right out of nowhere, and a paragraph represents a more significant break in the flow of what you're reading. It's like this: you're organizing an event, and there are the lighting, sound and carpentry teams. It makes sense to have all the electricians in the lighting team and all the audio engineers in the sound team - all of them are humans like all of them are sentences, but the segregation is necessary to get the work done. It's a hard life, but it's better that way.


8. Hyphens bring words together to create hyphenation. An en-dash, which is the width of the capitalized "N", signifies a range (e.g., 6-10 horses); note: no spaces before or after. On modern keyboards, like the QWERTY and the Dvorak, the figure dash and en-dash are actuated by the same button, which is an outright tragedy, but let's move on. The em-dash is as wide as the capitalized "M" and demarcates parenthetical thought ("... I'm sure you know - like everyone else does - that you're a genius..."). It's also used to signify interruption: "So, as I was saying, you need to- BAM! Oh my god, you killed him!"

There you have it: 8 simple rules to make your writing look good, at least better than it already is. Please use them and write like a normal person - and by normal, I mean what it represented in a time as recent as 1981. I don't like the new definition.