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2. Book Presentation on Usage and Abusage
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and Mind the Gaffe by Suyog Ketkar
3. Agenda
• Ambiguity
• Disguised conjunctions
• Tautology
• Vogue words
• What’s next?
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4. Let’s eat Grandma!
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5. Ambiguity
• Woolliness
• Obscurity
• Punctuation
• Catachresis
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6. Woolliness
Woolly. Lacking in definiteness or incisiveness; ‘muzzy’; confused and hazy.
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7. Obscurity
“Without distinction of idea, there cannot be distinction of speech – or style”
- Partridge
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8. Punctuation
“Great care ought to be had in writing, for the due observation of points:
for, the neglect thereof will prevent the sense.” (Richard Hodges, 1644)
Let’s eat, Grandma!
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9. Catachresis
A word misused. It is fault in writing; an improper use of words;
etymologically, ‘contrary to usage-ness’.
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10. Example
Source: My Facebook account
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11. Example
Source: www.myindiapictures.com
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12. Example
Source: www.myindiapictures.com
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13. Example
Source: www.myindiapictures.com
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14. Ambiguity?
The truth is:
“We see what we want to see.
We understand what we want to understand.”
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15. Tautology
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16. Disguised Conjunctions
• “According to…” instead of “As per…”
• “In reference to” instead of “Referring to…”
• “… for obtaining” instead of “to obtain…”
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17. Example
“As per, ‘in accordance with’, is such a horrible commercialese that even merchant
princes are less than riotously happy when their secretaries wish it on them.”
– Partridge
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18. Example
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19. Example
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20. Example
Source: www.csl.sri.com
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21. Tautology
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22. Tautology
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23. Tautology
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24. Example
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25. Example
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26. Example
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27. Tautology
Do you want me to repeat that again for you?
Are you serious?
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28. Vogue Words
Vogue word is a fashionable word or phrase.
Use words, such as the following with caution:
• Breakthrough, for a major advancement or discovery
• Clone, for identical copy (!)
• Deploy, for ‘to use; place’. One deploys forces or arguments
• Dimension, for ‘aspect; facet’
• Escalate (both transitive and intransitive), for ‘rise; expand’
• Guidelines, for ‘principles; criteria guiding action’
• input, for anything contributed to a system
• Subjective, for ‘biased’
• Target, for ‘goal; objective’. It is absurdly used in ‘to exceed one’s target’,
since the idea of a target is to hit it.
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29. Example
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30. What’s Next?
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31. What’s Next?
• Follow KISS
• 6Cs: Clarity, Correctness, Comprehensiveness, Cohesiveness, Conciseness,
Consistency (One C was added during the standards’ meeting for process
of editing)
• Write for business-users’
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32. What’s Next?
“Like persons, words cannot always be taken for granted.”
- Partridge
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Books displayed on the table.The open secret about the tragic comedy of speaking in English, is seriously funny.The deafening silence of this reality is pretty ugly.I am sure it is an unbiased opinion that learning to communicate what you wanted to is the only constant variable!
For ambiguity, start with examples:Scan parts of the book that you think are necessary to create an impression of ideas.