by Harpreet Bhagrath | Apr 2, 2012 | Fussy Editor
Mr Motwani,
I have attached the edited file (with Track Changes on) for your perusal. There were a few mistakes there, including typos. Besides the obvious mistakes, a few other parts have been changed; not because they were mistakes but because I was trying to improve the article a little. Kindly note the changes, and if you like, we can discuss them.
You wrote: As somebody said, a 2005 hurricane in South Florida left everything in its path “blowing in the wind.”
Mr Motwani, kindly don’t attribute certain quotes or fragments of quotes to unnamed/unidentified speakers. It’s better to ignore such a piece of information than attribute it to “somebody”, unless we can provide some more information on this speaker, like “As an Alabama resident who was… said”. Something, in the absence of a name, to give our readers to imagine that speaker in some way.
Also, you need to provide a fitting image and a caption to match in your forthcoming articles.
We use title case in our features’ headings and sub-headings. In news we stick to sentence case. Also, we use serial comma (Oxford comma) as a matter of house style.
You would also need to think of fitting headings for your future articles.
These two were clean copies, but I hope they are cleaner in future.
Harpreet Bhagrath
by Harpreet Bhagrath | Mar 23, 2012 | Fussy Editor
Mr Agarwal,
A few things were missing in your article on cloud computing.
We use title case in headings and sub-headings in our articles and features.
Second, you needed to make sub-heads bold as you do in our news.
Then, our ‘sub-headed’ parts are at least two graphs long. Your sub-heads hardly contained any details or further exploring.
The sub-headed parts, like the following three, could have been improved with an apt quote, some clarification, some analysis, etc., just to give them some ‘body’:
<strong>No Capital Expenditures</strong>
The costs of cloud computing are operational rather than capital. Since the IT infrastructure needs are handled by a third-party, the costs shift from capital to operational.
<strong>Low Cost of Entry</strong>
With its reach and access, cloud computing is the best option for any startup. You can test your idea very quickly or scale a division of your company to the world at low cost.
<strong>Bandwidth</strong>
If you require huge storage space, then it is better to buy that yourself rather than pay someone else for it.
Plus, we also need at least three quotes from experts or news makers. Your article fell short here.
Otherwise the article was a good read, but I feel it could have been a lot better.
I have published the article, but kindly make sure these issues are addressed in your forthcoming articles. Here’s the URL:
http://www.scivista.com/content/20110504/what%E2%80%99s-right-and-wrong-cloud-computing-7812674.html
Harpreet Bhagrath
by Harpreet Bhagrath | Mar 4, 2012 | Tutorials for Our Writers
Here’s the step-by-step process of conducting e-mail interviews.
- Communicate with the public relations department/secretary, as the case may be.
– Introduce yourself through an e-mail or give a call, explaining what we do and your position in CW
– Let them know the purpose of the communication, i.e. an e-mail interview with the subject.
- After you get the go-ahead of the interviewee through the PR department, tell the PR official/secretary that you’ll be sending a questionnaire for the interviewee to go through.
- Settle the timings with the PR person/secretary, telling him by what time you’ll be sending the questionnaire and within what time frame the answers will be sent back to us.
- Prepare the list of questions for the PR official/secretary to discuss with the interviewee
– Do thorough research on the interviewee, see if he/she has been in news lately
– Frame questions based on current happenings and news on the company/interviewee
- E-mail the list of questions to the PR official/secretary
– Ask the official/secretary when the answers will be e-mailed back to you.
– Let him know that after you get the answers, you still might cross-check certain facts, quotes etc.
– Let him know that you’ll be quoting the interviewee on the answers he provides
- Tell the PR official/secretary that the answers are going to be published ‘on the record’.
- Clear any issues coming out of the answers being ‘on the record’.
- After you get the e-mailed answers, edit and format them properly.
– Answers may or may not be shown to the interviewee, depending on whether they’ve requested or not, and what sort of story the answers are meant for.
by Harpreet Bhagrath | Feb 28, 2012 | Fussy Editor
Hi, Ankita
This is yet another time when I feel that your editing has ended up making the news even worse.
The lead in this news from Rahul was edited for one issue, but you ended up leaving out a crucial fact — which Rahul had duly provided, mind you — that was required for the readers’ understanding.
http://themoneytimes.com/featured/20110711/cameron-under-pressure-delay-news-corp-bskyb-deal-id-101701710742.html
This is what Rahul had written:
News Corp.’s troubles don’t seem like ending since allegations that its top selling weekly newspaper allegedly supported the voicemail-hacking of a 13-year-old kidnapped girl Milly Dowler.
Amid all the contentions, political pressure is escalating on British Prime Minister David Cameron to delay the approval of News Corp’s acquisition of British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC until Dowler’s phone-hacking case is solved by the British police.
Ed Miliband, the leader of opposition is reportedly seeking parliamentary vote this week if Cameron fails to handle the issue.
This is what you changed the whole part to:
News Corp.’s troubles don’t seem to be ending any time soon.
After the allegations that its top selling weekly newspaper supported the voicemail-hacking of a 13-year-old kidnapped girl Milly Dowler in 2002, Ed Miliband, the leader of opposition, is reportedly seeking parliamentary vote this week if British Prime Minister David Cameron fails to handle the issue.
Meanwhile, News Corp. has terminated its best-selling Sunday tabloid ‘News of the World’, which was the nucleus of the phone-hacking allegations. Its last edition came out Sunday.
We needed to tell the readers what was Miliband seeking parliamentary permission on — which Rahul had duly provided but you omitted. This fact comes way down in your edit, but by the time the reader gets there, the damage will have been done. Till then, the reader will stay confused about which issue does the PM fail to handle. Rather than leading the reader through to the meaning, we have confused him in the beginning itself by withholding one crucial bit of information.
To reiterate, this is the crucial part that was omitted by you, to the detriment of the piece’s readability:
…political pressure is escalating on British Prime Minister David Cameron to delay the approval of News Corp’s acquisition of British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC until Dowler’s phone-hacking case is solved by the British police.
The issue before PM is the delaying of the News Corp’s acquisition of another company. But your edit appears to give the mistaken impression that PM has to deal with the girl’s voicemail hacking. Will the lofty British PM handle a small-time hacking issue?
Though Rahul’s lead was reading awkward, and sure needed an edit, we ended up making it worse. In future, kindly edit closely for clarity.
I have put it all in writing, rather than talking to you in person, so that you can closely review where you went wrong. We’ll discuss this once you have time for this.
by Harpreet Bhagrath | Feb 23, 2012 | Fussy Editor
Hi, Sumit.
Can you ask this writer to use smaller paragraphs and use sub-headings?
If the writer is not providing sub-heads, then you kindly give at least two in a story. But the best is to get the writer to do the needful in the first place.
Plus, the write-up could do with a bit more editing, I’d say.
As told by an anonymous “source” Snooki, the Situation and their gang are making $100,000 per episode, and the new star cast will be a lot cheaper, besides that hefty amount they earn in appearances.
Kindly ask the writer to use proper punctuation. The introductory phrase “As told by an anonymous “source”” should have been separated with a comma.
Then, the phrase “besides that hefty amount they earn in appearances” doesn’t cut very well with me. The idea could have been incorporated (or rather ‘positioned’) in the sentence better.
The edited, reader-friendly sentence should have read something like the following:
As told by an anonymous “source,” Snooki, the Situation, and their gang are making $100,000 per episode — besides that hefty amount they earn in appearances, and the new star cast will be a lot cheaper.
Kindly notice such semantic issues in writers’ copies and teach them the right way, so that they don’t trouble you repeatedly on the same issues.
But even if you’re favorite juiceheads and guidettes be removed from Jersey Shore,…
In this sentence, you needed to edit closely. you’re is the problem part.
The whole news is littered with similar issues. So talk to the writer, so that he submits cleaner copies to you in future.
