Prof Dr Kiran Thakur’s book ‘Newspaper English’ launch on Sunday, January 06, 2019:
Price: Rs. 225.00
Book your copy via Amazon :
Publisher: Vishwakarma Publications (https://vishwakarmapublications.com/)
About Book
..The first sentence of a news story, or the lead, should not have more than 25 words.. A sentence in a newspaper should have average 15-20 words..Newspaper language should be plain, clear, and simple. It must be easy to understand for ordinary readers..
Generations of great journalists and media teachers in the West and in India have given such guidelines to their students and young reporters and sub-editors. These veterans include Sir Harold Evans, Martin Cutts, and our own Jyoti Sanyal, Editor, The Statesman’s Style Book.
Yet, Indian newspapers carry stories with leads replete with long-winded sentences, often with as many as 90 words.
So? How does it matter?
Prof Dr Kiran Thakur’s qualitative study demonstrated that lay readers find it difficult to quickly understand such stories. His research showed that journalists often use words that readers do not know.
Is there a way to improve the situation?
Prof Thakur came out with a solution after experimenting for over seven years under a UGC-funded study titled ‘Language of English Newspapers’. The study and the solution form the basis of this book, Newspaper English. He tested Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Level readability index as a tool to edit news.
And look, how simple it is to edit news and features using the formulae. You have only to set the proofing option in MS Word once for all. You can get readability statistics of your text every time. The next step is to follow his guidelines to edit!
Kiran Thakur takes the readers through a miscellany of examples that you will find helpful for journalistic writing. These include a sample of Mahatma Gandhi’s writing, samples of writing from an online publication for immigrants in the USA, and of Bhutan Times. It is fun to go through the pages containing ‘Most Annoying Clichés’,’ Crazy English’ and tailpieces of chapters such as ‘Spell Checkers.’
The book is a useful guide to students and teachers of journalism as well as reporters and sub-editors in newspapers and online publications. It is useful also to students and teachers of Management, Social Sciences, and English language.
About the Author
Prof Dr Kiran Thakur is a senior media academician with an equally impressive professional experience in journalism. After working for thirty years as a journalist with United News of India (UNI), and now-defunct The Indian Post and The Observer of Business and Politics, he took over as Professor and Head, Department of Communication and Journalism (DoCJ), the Savitribai Phule University of Pune in 2001. His doctoral thesis on web editions of Indian newspapers was a pioneering study in the field which he later extended as a post-doctoral research project to examine further developments in online journalism.
Prof Dr Thakur has been associated with teaching, curriculum development and research programmes in several state and private universities across India. He worked also with Mudra Institute of Communications Research (MICORE), Ahmedabad, in 2008-09 where he led a series of research that focussed on emerging trends in the television, mobile and web media. He has authored and edited many books including ‘Handbook of Print Journalism’ and ‘Press in India: On the threshold of 21st Century and its Marathi rendering’ (Edited).
Newspaper language is his area of keen interest. He carried out two UGC-funded major research projects on this topic in which he analysed the perception of readers from various parts of India on the quality, style, and readability of English in newspapers. The present book Newspaper English is based on the insights from this research as well as his extensive experience as reporter and sub-editor.
Presently Prof Thakur works as an Adjunct faculty at Pune’s FLAME University.
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