"Highly inflammable. Not to be loose shunted"

“Fragile! Handle with Care” is the warning tag that we often see in airports on baggage that contains delicate items. Indian Railways goes a step further. Their wagons carrying fuels have, written on them in bold, “Highly inflammable – Not to be loose shunted”.

English language is no different. One cannot take liberties with it. It can play havoc if not paid careful attention to.

What triggered me to write this piece is today’s (26/11/2019) front-page article in The Hindu (Vizag Edition). The title read: “Jagan launches anti-corruption helpline”. The very first sentence of the article is a bloomer. It reads (reproduced verbatim):

“Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Monday launched Citizen’s Help Centre, 14400, to register complaints on corruption at his camp office on Monday”.

I am sure discerning readers noticed the boo-boo that the reporter made. In fact, it’s a blunder and a major gaffe.

The sentence should have been written as:

“Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, on Monday, launched at his camp office, Citizen’s Help Centre, 14400, to register complaints on corruption”.

What does it all convey?

Like Marketing, Communication too (I am referring here, more to the written form of it) has 4 ‘P’s which are its lifeline. They are “Pertinence” (i.e. relevance), “Punctuation”, “Place/Position” and “Plainness”.

Pertinence

The first "P", Pertinence, needs no explanation. What is written must reflect the purpose and objective of the matter/issue being discussed or conveyed. Anything written, must have a context. It must fit the occasion. Beating around the bush or writing some thing unconnected with the topic at hand, should be a strict “no-no”.

Punctuation

The next “P”, Punctuation, plays a pivotal role in conveying the intended meaning. Let’s look at the following sentence:

Woman without her man is nothing.

It’s said that women punctuate it as:

Woman, with our her, man is nothing.

Men punctuate it as:

Woman without her man, is nothing.

Got it?

In fact, punctuation is important while speaking too. Where to break the sentence or take a pause, is essential to communicating well.

A joke goes that a woman whose husband was a sailor, sent a small note to the local parish to be read out during the Sunday mass. The note she wrote was:

“Mr Smith having gone to sea, his wife requests the prayers of the congregation for his safe return”.

The pastor (who perhaps was used to reading The Hindu ??) read it out as:

“Mr Smith having gone to sea his wife, requests the prayers of the congregation for his safe return”.

That all hell must have broken loose, is no brainer!

Place/Position

The third “P” is about the “Place” or “Position”.

The sentence that I highlighted above, from the article that appeared today in The Hindu, is a classic example of the importance of place/position for a word or phrase, in a sentence.

Let’s take the sentence: He hit me in the eye. Let’s also take a word “only” and play with it in the sentence.

ONLY he hit me in the eye. (No one else hit me)

He ONLY hit me in the eye. (I did not do anything. It was solely his aggression)

He hit ONLY me in the eye. (He hit others elsewhere!)

He hit me in ONLY the eye. (He did not hit me anywhere else) = He hit me in the eye ONLY.

He hit me in the ONLY eye. (I have only one eye and he hit me there)

What’s the moral? Words like “only” are adjectives, adverbs and conjunctions. We need to use them carefully! They are not to be loose shunted!

Here is another example about placing/positioning. This is how a bank employee wrote an internal memo.

“Special allowance may be paid to the staff members for burning the soiled notes along with the manager”

Huh! Sheer providence must have saved the manager!! The sentence should have been written as:

“Special allowance may be paid to the staff members along with the manager, for burning the soiled notes”.

Look at this from The Mint of Monday, April 29, 2019.

“The case against Chinese apps eyeing Indian smart phones” was the title. It read “India should not block any social-media platform, and certainly not because you can access bad-content on it”.

Oops! No punctuation!

The sentence can be punctuated like this (disastrously)!

“India should not block any social-media platform, and certainly not, because you can access bad-content on it”.

Or like this (thank God!)

“India should not block any social-media platform, and certainly, not because you can access bad-content on it”.

And the last "P" viz.

Plainness

It’s always advisable to write in simple language. Learning vocabulary by heart is required for and fortunately restricted to only admission tests or competitive exams. You can’t use words or language that can’t be understood, in office or at home; because what you speak will make no sense to anyone.

Sample this sentence from The Hindu (year 1977 or thereabouts) which, to the best of my remembrance, read something like this: (written by G K Reddy, people of my generation might recall!)

“The Janata Party, with its wrangles, squabbles, brawls and bickerings, that have been sullied by bitter recrimination, is now facing an agonizing ordeal at its national executive meeting, that has begun in an old ministerial mansion, with an atmosphere of sepulchral solemnity pervading all round”

Huh!

In the 1980s, I am told, a friend of my brother used to write to him letters that went something like this:

“Having kept the communication channel pregnant with silence for ages, I guess your exalted eminence has ultimately condescended to clear the arrears of correspondence that must be weighing heavily on conscience…. Having ocularly perused your epistle with the voluntary help extended by the optic nerve…..”

Ooooh! Must have been a die-hard Wodehouse fan!

Such writing made sense, perhaps, in that age, which, today, only people like Shashi Tharoor can COMPREHEND (??).

Not that verbosity, tautology or bombastic language (meanings later ??) are bad. In fact, I grew up reading and enjoying the novels of P G Wodehouse.

In the normal course (at office / home), KISS principle should be the key. Keep It Simple & Stupid. So that even a commoner (layman) understands what we are trying to convey. It pays to write clearly, crisply and correctly.

Let me conclude for now. In English, perhaps, more than in any of our vernacular languages, syntax (grammar) and semantics (meaning) are important. If either of them takes a hit, the sentence goes for a toss. 

I will be back with more. Watch this space!

As promised, I am back.