By Nirmaldasan
Newspapers in India and abroad are not against publishing reader-friendly reports. They do understand the principles of good communication: accuracy and clarity would boost circulation; and brevity would gain space for more news or advertising. Had they time enough, their leads would not exceed plain English expert Jyoti Sanyal’s maximum sentence length of 25 words. Had they time enough, their leads would be free of unnecessary words thanks to Thakur’s rule of thumb.
Plenty of ineffective leads and unfamiliar words may be found in any newspaper. But it is better for reporters to sharpen their writing skills than to blame the deadline for their incompetence. Prof. Dr. Kiran Thakur’s Newspaper English, published by Vishwakarma Publications in January 2019, addresses this problem. In a UGC-funded study, the author sampled 20 ineffective leads, rewrote them and subjected the original and rewritten versions to readability tests. The rewritten versions performed better than the original versions in terms of grade score. He also placed both the versions before 620 Master’s students across various cities in India; the respondents were not told which was which. A majority of them preferred the rewritten versions.
The author applied what has now come to be known as Thakur’s rule of thumb to the original leads and rewrote them in obedience to the principles of plain English. This reviewer examined the rewritten versions and found that Thakur had fulfilled Sanyal’s sentence length guideline in all but one: “Nine jawans of the anti-Maoist Special Operation Group (SOG) were killed and eight others seriously injured in a landmine blast triggered by Maoists in Koraput district of Orissa on Sunday morning.” Since I had enough time on my hands, I rewrote Thakur’s 31-word lead into a 24-word lead: “Nine jawans of the Special Operation Group (SOG) were killed in a landmine blast triggered by Maoists in Orissa’s Koraput district on Sunday morning. Eight others were seriously injured in the blast.” Sanyal would be pleased had he been alive; and so would Thakur because I have taken his rule of thumb seriously.
Thakur also picked up 40 words from newspapers and presented 20 each in two questionnaires. He writes: “The study showed that the journalists often used words that were not easy to understand for the common readers. These included words from foreign cultures. They often used jargon, technical terms, and words common readers do not use.” In three tables, the author shows how to avoid roundabout phrases, longer words and verbosity.
In Newspaper English we hear the voices of plain English experts (especially in the fifth chapter titled ‘Clear, plain and simple language’). The book has a foreword by the Research Director of Plain Language Commission, Martin Cutts. He writes: “Using numerous examples of stories from India’s leading newspapers, the book shows how their readability can be increased. It’s a most valuable source of ideas and research and I warmly commend it to you.”
The book is priced INR 225 and $9.00 U.S. For copies, email the author: drkiranthakur@gmail.com
Readability Monitor 