by Harpreet Bhagrath | Apr 12, 2012 | Harpreet Bhagrath's Blog, Tutorials for Our Writers, Writing Tutorials
We prefer to use fewer words, and any superfluous words are mercilessly discarded. So try to use as fewer words as possible in your articles and features.
As an example, I take this sentence from one of our write-ups: The basic idea behind this is to ship all samples from…
This could be reduced to ‘The idea is to ship all samples from….
Or this sentence: Ministry of Health stated that if a situation arises where there is a large scale spreading of the virus…
This could just be: Ministry of Health stated that in case of large scale spreading of the virus…
Notice how the graph below has been cut to size.
Draft: If you are among those, who believe that smoking just one cigarette would not hurt your health in any way, and then it’s high time you change your perception. Because as per the researchers of a new study, 15-30 minutes is all it takes before that one cigarette you had puffed starts causing genetic damage in your body, leaving you one step closer to cancer. (65 words)
Edited: Smoking just one cigarette would not hurt your health, you believe? It’s time you changed your belief. According to a new study, 15-30 minutes of smoking is all it takes to cause genetic damage in your body, leaving you one step closer to cancer. (44 words)
Any questions on the above? Just get in touch with the core team — shoot us a mail, message us on Yahoo Messenger, or just give us a tinkle.
Happy writing,
Harpreet Bhagrath
by Harpreet Bhagrath | Oct 17, 2011 | Tutorials for Our Writers, Writing Tutorials
After you have written your article or feature, ask yourself these questions.
Have you organised the arguments and ideas in a logical sequence?
- New information after old information and not the other way round
Does the reading become awkward for the reader?
- Transition of ideas within sentences and paragraphs has to be smooth
Is the content informative and interesting (or as interesting as it can be) throughout?
- Find the weak parts and work on them
Have you matched the writing style, tone, and purpose of the write-up?
Have you maintained the consistency of language and tone throughout the document? Has the TS style sheet been adhered to?
Have you checked pretentious language, homonym problems, spelling and punctuation mistakes, vague words and terms, illogical statements and arguments, incorrect possessives, clichés and trite expressions, and other such problems in the write-up?
Have you checked redundancy, wordy phrases, and needless repetitions? Does the write-up contain wordiness?
- Say more with less words, in a way that every word tells
Have you checked your word usage?
- Try to eliminate clichés, and use fresh words and phrases instead
- Try to better your words; see if you can replace weak or unfitting words with the ones that fit better
Any questions on these, just get in touch with the core team — shoot us a mail, message us on Yahoo Messenger, or just give us a tinkle.
Happy writing,
Cosmos Writers Editorial Team
by Harpreet Bhagrath | Oct 13, 2011 | Tutorials for Our Writers, Writing Tutorials
Here’s a bit on borrowing material from other sources.
Within the article, where you are talking about an idea — and the idea is not your own — you need to tell the readers honestly which source (website, book, magazine, paper, journal, etc.) the idea was borrowed from. You can write something like the following:
The Times noted in an article, article title here, that… (the idea continues here).
By doing the above, we are telling the readers that this idea does not belong to us. We did our research on the topic and borrowed the idea from The Times.
In case of quotes, if you did not take the quote first hand and borrowed it from a news site or magazine, you need to write a variation of the following:
“The quote here,” The Times quoted Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook, as saying.
So attribute all the borrowed ideas and information bits you put in the article to their sources (as exemplified above) at least three times throughout the article.
Because we expect the best from a writer of your caliber, you need to meet the following requirements towards researching and attributing the information:
ü Research on at least four good sources, and provide attribution to the sources of your information at least three times throughout the article.
ü Provide quotes from at least three speakers quoted in as many source sites.
- Link out to the source site, using the following HTML code: <a href=”URL of the source site”>The Times (website’s official name, not the home page URL)</a>.
- The attribution will typically read like the following: “The quote here,” The Times quoted Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook, as saying.
- With HTML coding, it reads like this: “The quote here,” <a href=”URL of the source site”>The Times (website’s official name, not the home page URL)</a> quoted Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook, as saying.
Any questions on the above? Just get in touch with the core team — shoot us a mail, message us on Yahoo Messenger, or just give us a tinkle.
Happy writing,
Cosmos Writers Editorial Team
by Harpreet Bhagrath | Oct 4, 2011 | Harpreet Bhagrath's Blog, Tutorials for Our Writers, Writing Tutorials
Don’t repeat the same bit of information in the article. It shows very badly on the writer.
Repetition only reduces the limited number of words we have to keep the reader interested in reading. Here’s a fitting example of repetition, with the duplicate ideas in blue:
The NIH has named a total of 36 institutions till date that will take part in the study and a few more are expected to be picked in the future. It will recruit study volunteers from various locations. When it is fully operational, 1,000 children will be recruited from 105 counties across the United States. Each funded study center will recruit children from two to three different counties…
…The NIH said that the people taking part will be from rural, urban and suburban areas, from all income and educational levels and from all racial groups. It also hopes that the study (to be conducted at 105 locations throughout the United State) can help pinpoint early-life influences that affect later development, with the goal of learning new ways to treat or prevent illness…
…100,000 U.S. children from inception to the age of 21.
And then again, later in the article:
When it is fully operational, 1,000 children will be recruited from 105 counties across the United States.
What’s the point of repeating the same information so many times?
Take this one more example:
Nearly everyone is prone to some sneaking disease like influenza. One can find almost everyone who has suffered through them occasionally. No matter how healthy our lifestyle and eating habits are, one can often find the stealthy flu playing havoc with the immune system of almost all individuals.
Both the sentences in the para above are saying the same thing. The part in italics is just asking for it.
Any questions on the above? Just get in touch with the core team — shoot us a mail, message us on Yahoo Messenger, or just give us a tinkle.
Happy writing,
Harpreet Bhagrath
by Harpreet Bhagrath | Nov 12, 2010 | Harpreet Bhagrath's Blog, Writing Tutorials
Some of us have trouble writing clear headlines. The following post tries to iron out a few of the troubles.
You have to be clear, short, and complete when writing a headline. To write a news headline, write the lead (the first sentence of your news that sums up the news) first and then eliminate all prepositions, articles, adjectives, conjunctions, and punctuation from the lead. You will be left with something that reads like a telegram, which is written in telegraphic English.
Now rewrite this headline in “historical present tense”, which is writing about a past action in present tense. So, instead of writing ‘Gunman killed five people in Washington’, write ‘Gunman kills 5 in Washington’. You can use this tense with most verbs by adding an “s”, like kills, shoots, announces, declares, etc.
Use a semicolon (;) to separate two thoughts in the headline, like ‘Gunman kills 5; arrested’. Use a comma when you have to use ‘and’, like ‘Gunman, accomplice kill 5; both arrested’. Use a colon (:) or a dash (–) as a substitute for ‘says’ or ‘said’. When the speaker comes before the quote, use colon, and when he comes after, use dash instead. Like here: ‘Obama: “Healthcare important for every American”’, but ‘“Healthcare important for every American” – Obama’.
Next, we have to tell the readers straight away, in the first 2-3 words, what is the news about. Which company, which celebrity, which place, what subject are they going to read about. Readers should have very clear idea about what they can expect from the headlined news.
Plus, we keep the headlines as short as possible. Online readers read fast; so fast that it cannot be called reading anymore. It’s scanning. So, readers are just scanning content on the Web, and they cannot afford to waste their time on reading text that’s beating about the bushes, as opposed to coming straight to the point. If you’re trying to create suspense in your headlines, consider stopping doing that. Unlike print headlines, online readers don’t get curious; they get angry and move on. They’ve been hurt a lot in the past by promising headlines that proved to be ordinary stories.
So, remember short headlines and provide the gist of the news in the first 2-3 words. And be clear, short, and complete when writing a headline.
In case of any confusion, just get in touch with us.
Cheers,
Harpreet Bhagrath
by Harpreet Bhagrath | May 12, 2010 | Harpreet Bhagrath's Blog, Writing Tutorials
The whole idea behind proofreading business documents is to let clients know that the organization employs a professional bunch of executives who follow a consistent writing style. It’s an establishment’s way of telling the clients that it is professional enough to work as a team and follow a disciplined approach in writing.
To appreciate the importance of proofreading, imagine what sloppy proofreading means, in terms of loss to the business: the company appears unprofessional to the clients and the business misses out on prospective clients. Company documents put together in a willy-nilly way give clients the impression that it’s an unsystematic and clueless organization.
Notwithstanding how hard the executives are trying to give good impression to business clients, if the language is not straight and contains proofreading issues, patrons are going to dump the company in favor of the one that values the proofread business reports and literature.
Proofreading skills are essential to a business, especially in the age of global business establishments, MNCs and BPOs. A lot of the global business deals depend on the impression executives make while meeting and conversing with overseas clients. Likewise, the clients judge a lot about a business by the way it presents itself through company reports and literature, and with effective proofreading, management can create that same sort of impression on clients with written communication.
An error-free report or business document with proper punctuation and capitalization, and lack of typos and grammatical mistakes conveys a positive message to the client and builds an impressive image of the organization. Careless errors, on the other hand, send wrong signals to the clients, and in business, no one likes to work with sloppy management that cannot even get the language straight. So, since business documents, reports, and literature of a business establishment carry its image, to survive the competition in contemporary business world, proofreading is of paramount importance.
UK and US English Usage
Next, it’s also very important to be sensitive to the UK and U.S. English usage. Both the languages are pretty much the same, yet there are significant differences between the two. Since international business executives may need to communicate with UK clients as well as the ones from U.S., it is important to know the subtle differences between them. And all this just to give the right impression to your clients.
One of the differences in UK and U.S. English is that some words exist in UK English but not in U.S. English, and vice-versa. Then, some words and phrases are found in both, except their meanings are completely different.
Word endings, in spellings, tell a lot about these differences in the two. Words ending with ‘our’ in UK English end in ‘or’ in the U.S. English. To pick an example, the U.S. equivalent for ‘vapour’ in UK English is ‘vapor’. UK English has words ending in ‘re’, whereas they often end in ‘er’ in U.S. Plus, UK English ends its words in ‘yse’ (analyse) but in U.S. English such words end in ‘yze’, as in analyze. Ditto for words ending in ‘ise’ and ‘ize’, with U.S., again, favoring (favouring for UK) ‘z’.
Punctuation is another area to be careful about. Use of full stops, which are called periods in U.S., in abbreviations is one of the chief punctuation differences. UK English doesn’t have full stop in abbreviations, unlike U.S. English. For example, Mr Raman Ahuja, PhD in UK English becomes Mr. Raman Ahuja, Ph.D in U.S. English.
By Harpreet Bhagrath
The writer is the editor at Brisbane Indian Connexion and principal editor at Cosmos Media
Comments? Questions? Criticism? Replies?
Shoot a mail to harpreetbhagrath@gmail.com
