Please lend me your red color pen. . . .

I was at the vegetable market one day and I was looking for some garlic. I couldn’t find any. I tried asking the shopkeepers, but they did not know the word “garlic.” Then, I saw a basket of shallots, which are commonly used in sambar here. I picked one up and showed  it to the shopkeepers and said, “Like this, but small and white.” Again, they look at me totally confused. Then I remembered, “Oh, I’m in India.”

“Small in size. White in color,” I tried again.

“Oh! Yes, of course,” they said and quickly found me a big basket of garlic.

In speaking, we often find such redundancy, but in writing, one should carefully avoid such phrases. An extension of this is the use of phrases such as “the reason is because…”, “we were completely surrounded…”, “it was an unexpected surprise…”, “unless and until…”, and “enjoy Mr Grumpy’s free gift!”

. . . sew eye can correct this paper.

Such mistakes can be removed from your writing during a careful editing session. But, it seems like people are getting lazier every day.

Take, for example, spelling. The following is something that, unfortunately, I have become accustomed to seeing in my students’ assignments:

We must mansion that the ultimate massage for the forming community is that they must fallow these techniques.

Your word processor doesn’t know the difference between “mention” and “mansion”; “farming” and “forming”; or “follow” and “fallow”; but I hope that you do!

The biggest problem comes when you find that you are making these mistakes chronically. However, being observant of your own writing can easily change this from being a big problem to being one of your smallest problems. You can add it to your personal writing stylesheets (see Grump #004) to help yourself remember to include it as part of your editing process.

Download the Grumpy Writer’s Grumps Issue #011: What if I didn’t see?

I was preparing for one of my classes the other day—Managerial Oral Communication—and I decided to revisit some videos from past sessions to see if there was anything specific I should address. There was one video in which one of my students, while giving a five-minute speech, used the phrase “If we see” about 25 times, an average of once every 12 seconds.

Here are a few examples of how the phrase might be used:

• Here, if we see that Customer A wants to purchase two units of widgets. . .
• If we see the infant mortality rate in this village, it is 15%.
• If we see the cropping pattern, paddy is grown in most of the cultivable land in this district.

The way it is used reminds me of the overuse of “like” in US English (well, California English in particular). It is essentially a placeholder, or an opportunity for presenters to organize their ideas (although, as any presenting or speech coach will tell you, this method of pacing your speech sounds really amateurish).

OK. Fine. When we speak, we sometimes need to buy some time, and long pauses can be awkward for everyone. But why would you put this in writing?

“Aw. Come on!” you say. “You don’t really see this in writing.”

Except that I do. . . quite often, actually. Sometimes, the samples are similar to the ones I’ve already pointed out, but more often, I find it being used like “If we see Table 1, this presents data about. . . .”

So, what if I didn’t see?

Well, if I didn’t see, that would be somewhat horrible. But if my students realized what they were doing to my eyes, then I might get to observe more streamlined writing and speaking. I could simply read “Table 1 presents” (3 words instead of 7) or hear “The infant mortality rate in this village is 5%” (9 words instead of 13). Perhaps, if they saw what I see, the work delivered to me would be more concise and effective.

Download the Grumpy Writer’s Grumps Issue #?!?: A Typical “Day 1″ in a Class with New Students

Download the Grumpy Writer’s Grumps Issue #010: The People from Foreign

When I was writing last week’s grump, I was reminded about another incident. At the Academy, perhaps a year ago, there was an intern from the Netherlands working on a research project. We became good friends, and one of the things that we would do was share some of the “Indianisms” we were observing. One day, at tea, she came to me with a printout of a report published by, if I remember correctly, the Madurai Corporation. In one of the appendixes, there was a set of captioned photos. One of them was a picture of some white (well, definitely non-Indian) people, and the caption simply said “The people from foreign.”

Some of my students make the same mistake. For example, imagine they are doing a village study and are writing about, say, the migration scenario there. “Most of the village people here are going to foreign to work,” they might write, leaving me in a dilemma about what I should grump about first. When I decide to try and correct them on the “to foreign” part, they start to try and correct it as “they are going to abroad” instead. Grrr…. Another similar usage is along the lines of “This is Mr. Grumpy. He is from foreign.”

As with last week’s topic, this is pretty easily fixed. “Foreign” should be accompanied by another word. (It’s an adjective, so it should modify a noun or a pronoun.) For example, you might say, “Most of the villagers are going to foreign countries (or “nations,” or something similar) to work.”

Using “abroad” can also work, but you need to be careful here too. Abroad is not usually preceded by “to” so you should not write “they are going to abroad to work”; you should simply write “they are going abroad to work.” You can also say “This is Mr. Grumpy. He’s from abroad” and you’ll be fine.

Unfortunately, I cannot explain exactly why it’s OK to say “from abroad” and not “to abroad.” It has to do with prepositions and adverbs, but it’s somewhat confusing, even for a native English speaker. I guess you’ll just have to trust me here….

Download the Grumpy Writer’s Grumps Issue #009: This weekend, I am going to my native

“Hey! What are you going to do this weekend?” I ask a colleague at lunch, just starting some conversation.

“Tonight, I am going to my native,” she replies, and I am left wondering if I should get into an English lesson or if I should just go ahead and enjoy lunch.

The expression itself just bothers me (while also making me feel like laughing). It sounds very “colonial”-as in a derogatory way in which a colonialist might refer to a group of indigenous people. To me, the expression, “The natives are very primitive” doesn’t sound like a very flattering way to refer to a group of people.

(An aside: A related expression, though one which has been changing its meaning over time is “go native,” for example, “Mr. Grumpy has gone native and no longer owns any shoes.” In the past, to “go native” was to adopt what was typically seen as a more primitive or unrefined way of life; however, today, many tourists like to at least imagine that if they “go native,” they will be better accepted by the local community. Of course, their choice of what it means to “go native” is usually quite amusing, especially, I imagine, for the locals….)

Another part of the problem for me is that the statement sounds incomplete because “native” is an adjective (unlike “natives” in the third paragraph, which is a noun). Adjectives are supposed to do what? Modify a noun. In other words, your native what? Here, you might insert a suitable noun, like “place,” or “village.”

But even if the statement were to be rephrased as “I am going to my native place,” I’d still be pretty grumpy, though at least I’d be happy that it’s a complete thought. So, what would I say instead? I would probably say “I’m going to my home —” (where “—” can be replaced by something like town or village). Or I might say “I’m going to my birth place” or “I’m going to my parent’s home” or something more descriptive. If you weren’t born there, but you spent the majority of your childhood there, you might even say “I’m going to the place where I grew up” or “… the place where I spent my childhood.”

Download The Grumpy Writer’s Grumps Issue #008: Whether you know you are wrong?

Somewhere along the line, it seems like many of my students and some of my fellow colleagues decided that the word “whether”, perhaps since it starts with “wh”, belonged in the same category as question words like “who”, “what”, “where”, “when”, and “why.” So, for example, I would frequently hear questions like, “Whether it is OK to start a sentence with a verb?” (when a simple “Is it OK…” would have been fine) or “Whether you cook your own dinner at home or go to restaurants?” (when they meant to ask “Do you cook…). My favorite is when I receive emails with a document to edit, and the subject is “Whether it is OK?”

And this is not a small problem either. In fact, for one recent assignment, students were asked to develop a ten-question interview schedule to find out people’s views towards the cinema. For several students, approximately half of their questions were like these:

• Whether you enjoy the cinema?
• Whether you go to the cinema with your friends or alone?
• Whether going to the cinema affects your studies?

All of these “questions” simply need the auxiliary verb “do.”

So, how do we actually use the word whether? It certainly is a word which sometimes relates to a question. For example, “I don’t know whether she’s at the campus today,” indicates that there is some uncertainty. That’s “whether” being kind of like an “if,” as if we were saying “I don’t know if she’s at the campus today or if she is not.” “I hope you enjoy reading the Grumpy Writer’s Grumps, whether you agree with Mr. Grumpy or not,” uses “whether” as meaning something like “regardless of if” or “no matter if” or “in spite of if.” In other words, it sort of implies that you’re expecting that the decision won’t make a difference. Another example of that type of usage would be “Whether India wins or looses the next match, they are going to the finals.”

Download the Grumpy Writer’s Grumps Issue #007: I had surgery last week, and when it was done, I was paining like anything

Students at the Academy like to play sports in their spare time, and one of the sports that they regularly play is volleyball. Sometimes, the games get pretty competitive, with lots of glaring at each other, and yelling in Hindi and so on. Sometimes, the games go on for pretty long too, leaving some of the participants sore, or, as they like to say, “Paining like anything.”

Sounds cute. Fun to say. Makes me laugh all the time. But I don’t think it’s the best way to express what is being felt.

“Paining” is a real word, but I honestly cannot think of when I would ever use it. “Pain” is one of those words that can be a noun and a verb, but is most often used as a noun. For example, in the sentence “Since my car accident, I have had chronic pain in my lower back,” “pain” is being used as a noun. As for use as a verb, it is usually in the following context: “It pains me to see the way most people treat animals.” (In other words, it makes my mind uneasy–I’m not physically hurt.) We might even say “My lower back pains constantly now that I’ve injured it,” but most people would say “My lower back hurts constantly now that I’ve injured it.”

The other half of the equation for my amusement is the vague “like anything.” This is a phrase you’ll hear quite often in conversation.

“Last week we went to the amusement park and we enjoyed like anything!”

“I plagiarized on my paper and my teacher got mad like anything!”

It’s pretty easy to see what the word means in these contexts. It’s essentially an extreme, for example, “We enjoyed it a lot” or “my teacher got incredibly mad.”

So, instead of writing “My hand is paining like anything,” you can try “My hand hurts a lot” or “I am experiencing extreme pain in my hand.”

I know. It does not sound nearly as interesting, but good writing should have some precision in the choice of words used….

Download the Grumpy Writer’s Grumps Issue #006: The upgradation of our language will happen only after the updation of our dictionaries…

A colleague of mine recently gave me something to edit. Before I started, however, she admitted that parts of the document was difficult to write. She had found herself using “learnings” and kept trying to think about how to remove that horrible word. Overall, she had done a great job getting rid of learnings, but she also introduced another one of my least favorite modern words: “updation.”

“Updation” and “upgradation” are two more words on my “Words I Dislike” list. Both of these words, I think, are a result of our increasingly computerized world.

“Who is going to be in charge of our website updation?”

“Our hardware is very old. We need to do some upgradation this year.”

As with the word “learnings,” I expect that there would be several people who would want to make the case for adopting these words.

“Language should evolve,” I can hear them say. “We need to add these words to our vocabulary to keep up with the changing times.”

But, do we really? Let’s look at these words more closely.

I don’t see why “update” needs any change for usage in today’s world. “Update” can already be a noun and a verb, so it’s already a pretty flexible word. For example, “Here is my update of the events happening in my location” is update being used as a noun. “We should update our website more frequently” is an example of update being used as a verb. The original example above can be rewritten as “Who is going to be in charge of updating our website?” You’ll still be easily understood, your language will be more active, and you won’t be using any invented words.

Similarly, “upgrade” is equally flexible, again being usable as both a noun and a verb. “An upgrade will be offered to all clients who have been with us for more than five years” is the word being used as a noun. “You can upgrade your vocabulary by investing in a good dictionary” is the word being used as a verb. We can easily rewrite the second sentence as “Our hardware is very old. We need to upgrade it this year.” Again, I don’t think that there’s any confusion here, is there? So why use an awkward word like upgradation?

Download Issue #005: Let’s have very less mistakes today morning.

When? Oh. This morning.

“Today morning, when I was on my way to work, I saw an old friend. He said he was trying to call me just yesterday night, but that he had lost my phone number. We decided that we would meet today night for dinner.”

Do you see the mistakes in the above paragraph? Hint: they all deal with time. That’s right. These time phrases are all wrong.

So, what should they be? Use:

• This with morning, evening, and afternoon.
• Last with night.
• For today and tonight, do not use this and last.

You can also use this and last to talk about other units of time, for example, week, weekend, Friday, month, year, decade . . . you get the idea.

Q: How much time does it take to create each week’s issue of the Grumpy Writer’s Grumps? A: Very less.

The phrase “very less” confuses me.

Consider the following: “How much did that DVD cost?” “Rs. 80.” “Oh no. It should be very less.” or “This tea has very less sugar in it.”

The first conversation can easily be understood to mean “much less” (which would be the correct form). The second sentence about the tea, however, can have two interpretations. First, it could mean “much less,” as if the tea were being compared to some other sweetened tea. Second, it could be corrected to “very little” in which case it isn’t being compared to anything directly.

But whatever the intended meaning, in both examples, “very less” is wrong.

Overall, the easiest way to remember to not use “very less” is to remember that the opposite of “less” is “more” and you would NEVER say “very more,” would you? No, you’d say “much more,” and similarly, “much less.”

Here’s Mr Grumpy’s special 2009 gift to you. Everyone else was busy making calendars, so I thought I’d make one too! So, don’t wait….

• Download an A3-sized PDF version of the wall calendar.
• Download a 2-page PDF that can be printed double-sided, cut in quarters, and arranged into a pocket-book.

Mr. Grumpy says, “Make 2009 your year of writing good academic reports. Use my month-by-month advice to help you get from start to finish for almost any type of school paper. Just remember, always make sure that you are writing about the right thing. If I asked you to write about the advantages of electronic libraries over conventional libraries, should you write about the history of book publishing? I guess only if you wanted to make me more grumpy than I already am!”

• January: Make sure you know what you’re supposed to write about. Look for key words like define, explain, analyze, compare, or critique. These types of words are there to help you understand your assignment better.
• February: “Presearch.” Think about what you already know and about what you still need to know. Start doing some basic reading, broadly related to the assignment, so that you have a general understanding about the topic before you really get into the specifics.
• March: Hit the books and get friendly with your favorite search engines. Narrow down the broad areas of interest from your “presearch” and figure out what you actually need to do more research on.
• April: Take good notes. Document your sources carefully. Figure out a system for organizing your sources and notes, whether it be with sticky-notes, highlighters, note-cards, notebooks, or folded pages in your books. Find the system that works best for you.
• May: Free-write and brainstorm for further ideas or for ways to link your ideas together better. Think about the overall flow you wish to achieve.
• June: Outline your paper. Write down your thesis statement and the topic statements for your supporting paragraphs. Remember that each paragraph should have a topic statement! Determine what your main points are and what your supporting ideas are.
• July: Create a sentence outline for your entire paper. Focus on the first and last couple of sentences of each paragraph since these should contain the bulk of your message and should help maintain the flow throughout your paper.
• August: Write your first draft. Do not restrict yourself too much at this stage. It is better to write more and cut back later than not be able to write enough to start with.
• September: Make sure you have some time to set your work aside. A week is nice, but even a day or two will help. This makes it easier for you to see your work more objectively and with “new eyes.”
• October: Get out your red pen. Revise your paper for consistency and flow of ideas. Make sure your thesis is clear and that everything in the document supports this thesis. Check that your writing is suitable for your given audience.
• November: Formatting. Do this last. Or, save yourself the trouble of ever having to format something again by creating templates in your favorite word-processor, for example, during the free time you get while giving yourself a break from your writing.
• December: Get a fine-toothed comb and check every comma and period. Analyze those dashes and slashes. Count your subjects and match them with your verbs. Make sure all your sources are cited. Ask yourself, “What would Mr Grumpy think about this?”