Friday, August 3, 2007

victorian euphemisms still plaguing indian journalism

"The woman was relieved of her purse by a miscreant yesterday night"
better: woman was robbed
"they guy was caught in inebriated state before entering the room"
better: guy was drunk
"would u please repress the insane outburts of merriment"
better: stop laughing!
"where is my rotundity of leather?"
better: wheres my football?

These are few examples picked up from conemporary journalism which make lavish use of circulocution and gibberish. Indian journalism since ages has been plagued by babu english, legacy of english officialiase. We tend to do pick up these mistakes from the model essays served in guides (like wren n martin) in schools, irony is, inspite of publishing revised editions every year, mistakes stay!It seems journalists are rather paid to make sentences longer and senseless all because when they write they forget about the reader.
There can be two approaches to writing, speak-as-u-write or write-as-u-speak. Needless words clutter writing producing a khichdi out of nothing. Circumlocution or the roundabout way of telling things is one of four main diseases indian officialese suffer from, for eg. for business writers prices dont go up they undergo an upward revision, oh sorry i just wrote it in a hasty manner (hastily)!
Planeonasm or the art of adding adjective to a meaningful-by-itself word is a crime newspapers are often seen to commit. The first word only duplicates the idea in the word next to it:
advance planning, final outcome, end product, past history, proposed plan etc.

1 comment:

Parul said...

welcome back to the blogosphere!

Sometimes while i talk to you i feel you too are infected!