Writing on writing 3

Writing in paragraphs

In the previous essay on this blog (Writing on Writing 2, Notes on how to write articles or essays) we have seen how we should plan our essay – think of the readers, identify relevant points, and put them in a structure. In this essay, I am going to discuss how we can convey our message clearly by writing sleek paragraphs. But before I go on, let me ask you a question. These are two images of the same article. Which one of them would you prefer to read and why?

 I am sure you would vote for the second image. You would prefer to read it because it is easier to read paragraphs separated by a blank line in between. But is the issue only about comfort of your eyes?

The anatomy of a paragraph

The answer obviously is NO. If you write in paragraphs, it is a lot easier for your reader to follow your arguments. And that brings us to the question: What is a paragraph? It would be a good idea if instead of reading the definition you define the term yourself. Please write down the definition of “paragraph”, or write it in your head before you read ahead.

…

And once you’ve done so, you’ll see your definition is very close to this: A paragraph is a section of a piece of writing usually consisting of number of sentences that deal with a single idea.

So that’s it. A paragraph is a packet containing a single idea. When you write, make sure that you don’t put two different ideas in a single paragraph.  If you follow this rule, you will win half the battle. In order to win the other half, let’s ask ourselves the question: What is the anatomy of a paragraph? To put it simply, does every paragraph contain similar sections?

The answer is: not always, but usually they do. And often, a paragraph has four sections. The main section is the single idea on which you are writing the paragraph. You write a sentence or two to describe the central idea of a paragraph. In all, a paragraph usually has the following parts.

1.       The main idea in a sentence or two, which is/are called topic sentence(s)

2.       Sentences leading to the topic sentence(s) or the main idea

3.       Supporting ideas – very often, they are evidence in support of the main idea.

4.       A sentence to establish a link with the following paragraph.

Please remember: this is only a general pattern. Every paragraph doesn’t have all these elements and neither do they always come in the above order.

Also note that the fourth element above is an essential ingredient of fine writing. It makes the difference between lucid writing and boring writing as it creates “curiosity” in the mind of the reader to continue reading and find out what lies ahead. If you don’t bring in this element consciously, there is every chance that your reader won’t bother to continue till the end.

Dissecting a paragraph

We are going to read a report on a cricket match between Bangladesh and South Africa. Here is the first paragraph of the report:

Of late, I’ve hated watching cricket primarily because rather than sport it’s now more of showbiz. An awful lot of hoopla is created around the game (at least in India) and public opinion is manipulated to ensure enormous TV viewership. And just as any business has ruthless practitioners who would break any rules – moral or legal – to maximize profit, cricket too has its share of con-men, a well-known fact that has just become official thanks to the recent indictment of some big names who ran the business in India. But last night, I loved watching Bangladesh destroy the mighty South Africans in Chittagong. And this is how it unfolded.

Can you identify the four elements in this paragraph? Here is my take:

Topic sentences	Of late, I’ve hated watching cricket primarily because rather than sport it’s now more of showbiz. … But last night, I loved watching Bangladesh destroy the mighty South Africans in Chittagong.
Introductory sentences	There are no introductory sentence in this paragraph
Supporting sentences or evidence	An awful lot of hoopla is created around the game (at least in India) and public opinion is manipulated to ensure enormous TV viewership. And just as any business has ruthless practitioners who would break any rules – moral or legal – to maximize profit, cricket too has its share of con-men, a well-known fact that has just become official thanks to the recent indictment of some big names who ran the business in India.
Connecting sentence	And this is how it unfolded.

Let’s now move on to the next paragraph of the story.

While returning from my workplace, I saw on my phone – South Africa was at a little over hundred for four. I didn’t think much of it as I expected them come out of the hole. After coming home, I casually switched on the TV. And was astounded to see the way the game was panning out!

As you can see, this paragraph has only two of the four elements, three introductory sentences and then the topic sentence, which is in bold. You will also notice that here the topic sentence is also performing the role of a connecting sentence as it creates a curiosity in the mind of the reader to check what happened next.

Your turn

Now identify the four elements of the following paragraph:

The softer sub-continental pitches are not friendly towards fast bowlers and Bangladesh had never produced awe-inspiring seamers. Yet, last night, Rubel Hussains and Mustafizur Rehmans of Bangladesh looked more like Mitchell Johnsons or Morne Morkels. They had such a vice-like grip on the South Africans – the batsmen seemed to be shaking in their boots. At one time, it seemed they wouldn’t last the 40 overs. And in the end, they scored only 168 for nine. I thought maybe, there is some demon in the wicket that is evading my untrained eyes.

Please scroll down to check the answer at the end of this article.

So as you can see, by following a few simple rules, you can write beautiful paragraphs that are not only easy to follow, but also make an impact. In the next essay of this series, we will discuss how to connect different parts of a piece of writing to improve coherence.

Cheers!

Kolkata

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Key to the task:

Topic sentence	They had such a vice-like grip on the South Africans – the batsmen seemed to be shaking in their boots.
Introductory sentences	The softer sub-continental pitches are not friendly towards fast bowlers and Bangladesh had never produced awe-inspiring seamers.
Supporting sentences or evidence	Yet, last night, Rubel Hussains and Mustafizur Rehmans of Bangladesh looked more like Mitchell Johnsons or Morne Morkels. … At one time, it seemed they wouldn’t last the 40 overs. And in the end, they scored only 168 for nine.
Connecting sentence	I thought maybe, there is some demon in the wicket that is evading my untrained eyes.

Writing on writing 2

Notes on writing reports, articles, or essays

Ask any young professional which part of their job they hate, nine out of 10 will say "writing reports". If you are one of the nine, this essay is for you. Trust me, when you’ve finished reading this, you’ll have a clear idea about how to approach the task of writing a report or an essay or article.

When you write or speak, it doesn't really matter what you are saying. What matters is what your audience is receiving. You may have some brilliant ideas that will change the course of history, but if your readers / listeners don’t accept any of it, your efforts are wasted. You might as well have watched a soap opera instead! Therefore, it is always a good idea to think what your readers might accept. To put it simply, think from the point of view of your reader / listener before you plan to present an idea in writing or speech. In this short essay, I am going to focus on writing in general and I’ll share with you some tricks that you can use to hook the attention of your reader and keep them engaged. First, I will check how you should select the contents of your essay. And then I’ll discuss how to organize your essay.

Our first stop on the way to good writing is to analyse the reader. This means you will have to ask the following questions: 

1. Will my target readers be interested in this? (If the answer to this is “No”, stop writing. Select another topic or think of a different approach.) 
2. What do I wish to achieve by writing this? (My aim). 
3. How much do my readers already know? What information / knowledge will be useful to them? 
4. What is the cultural and educational background of my readers? (This will largely determine your contents and what kind of language you use.)

Once you have got answers to these questions, jot down for whom you are writing and your aim or purpose of writing. For example, I am writing this essay for educated readers who need the skills to write essays etc. And my aim is to give them the essential points they should keep in mind to structure their thoughts clearly and cogently. My subsidiary aim is to keep it short so that an average reader can go through it in 10 minutes.

After you have jotted down your aims, think of / research what points (facts and ideas) will serve your purpose. Identify a set of points that will be adequate to achieve your aim(s). Keep them and discard everything else. 

Next, we will see how we can put the ideas (points) into a neat structure. Any written text has three parts: the intro, the middle, and the conclusion.

And this is what you normally include in these parts.

Introduction: 

1. A pithy sentence to capture the attention of the reader. 
2. Your aim, that is, what you wish to achieve; or even better, what benefit your reader can expect by reading it. Often, this sentence will give the reader a reason to read on. 
3. A brief outline of the contents.

The main body: 

     This can be organized in many different ways, and let me keep this for another essay.

Conclusion:  

1. Sum up the main points and highlight your main messages. 
2. A sharp punchy sentence containing your main message, something would create a lasting impression on the reader.

And that brings us to the end. To sum up, we have seen how we should select the contents depending on the perceived needs of our target readers and then we have examined how we should put our ideas into a structure. The ideas explained here is no rocket science. But most useful ideas in life aren’t. What is important is that we keep these ideas in the back of our head if we wish to become effective writers.

Kolkata 

Revised on Friday, 27 Jan 2016                                              [Picture courtesy Wikipedia]

LET’S REVIEW. Can you go back to the opening paragraph of this essay and check the following?

1.     Is there a sentence in this to hook the attention of the reader? Which one?

2.     What sentences in the intro give the outline of the essay?

3.     Think. Do you think sentences like these are required at the beginning of an essay or article? Why / why not?

[Answers below.]

===================

Answers to review questions:

1.       Yes there is: “If you are one of the nine, this essay is for you. Trust me, when you’ve finished reading this, you’ll have a clear idea about how to approach the task of writing a report or an essay or article.”

2.       “… I am going to focus on writing and I’ll share with you some tricks that you can use to hook the attention of your reader and keep them engaged. First, I will check how you should select the contents of your essay. And then I’ll discuss how to organise the contents.”

3.       The sentences are important because they give the reader a reason to read on. 

Shabash Bangladesh!

 

Of late, I’ve hated watching cricket primarily because rather than sport it’s now more of showbiz. An awful lot of hoopla is created around the game (at least in India) and public opinion is manipulated to ensure enormous TV viewership, particularly for the tamaasha called T-20, where snicks and dropped catches that roll on to the boundary are routinely applauded as masterstrokes! And just as any business has ruthless practitioners who would break any rules – moral or legal – to maximize profit, cricket too has its share of con-men, a well-known fact that has just become official thanks to Justice Lodha Committee’s indictment of some big names who ran the business in India.

But last night, I loved watching Bangladesh destroy the mighty South Africans in Chittagong. And this is how it unfolded.

While returning from my workplace, I saw on my phone – South Africa was at a little over hundred for four. I didn’t think much of it as I expected them come out of the hole. After coming home, I casually switched on the TV. And was astounded to see the way the game was panning out!

The softer sub-continental pitches are not friendly towards fast bowlers and Bangladesh had never produced awe-inspiring seamers. Yet, last night, Rubel Hussains and Mustafizur Rehmans of Bangladesh looked more like Mitchell Johnsons or Morne Morkels. They had such a vice-like grip on the South Africans – the batsmen seemed to be shaking in their boots. At one time, it seemed they wouldn’t last the 40 overs. And in the end, they scored only 168 for nine. I thought maybe, there is some demon in the wicket that is evading my untrained eyes.

After the break, I didn’t switch on the TV for a short while. (Let things perk up a bit!) By the time I did, it was something like seven overs, 41 runs, and zero wickets. Before I could blink, it was 53 for no loss. A twenty-two year-old boy from Khulna, Soumya Sarkar hit three superb consecutive on-drives to the fence. On drives - said to be one of the most difficult shots in cricket executed with effortless ease. Stupendous!

And it was no fluke. The game continued in the same fashion. Bangladesh simply toyed with the South African bowling. Both the openers, Soumya Sarkar and Tamim Iqbal hit a flurry of fours. And more importantly, they didn’t seem to be in the least of trouble against great bowlers like Morkel or Imran Tahir, the latest international sensation in the field of spin. Many a match we’ve seen when Bangladeshi attack was decimated with disdain by more experienced practitioners of the game. But boy that’s history. Yesterday, the two Bangladeshi batsmen seemed to be dealing with a bunch of small-town club cricketers. And the shot that sort of summed up the story was a vicious looking bouncer by Rabada. Sarkar ducked, seemed saving his head, but at the precise moment when the ball was to cross him, held out the bad almost vertically to guide the ball above the wicket keeper's head to the boundary. You can play such nonchalant shots only when you are supremely confident and have got the measure of your opponents.

Bangladesh’s one-day series win against South Africa after coming back from a 0-1 deficit was important, but far more important was their total dominance of the game. What we watched yesterday was reiteration of a statement that the Bangladesh cricket team has been making for some time now. Watch out – we are the emerging powerhouse of cricket! Another Sri Lanka in the making.

Shabash Bangladesh!

 Kolkata

16 July 2015

Banalata Sen

Jibanananda Das

I’ve been walking the paths of this world 
For a thousand years. Much have I travelled
From the waters of Ceylon to the Malaya seas;
In the withering worlds of Ashoka and Vimvisara,
Where I lived in the still more distant city of Vidarva.
A tired soul am I, spindrift raging all round me
I’d but moments of quiet, with Banalata Sen of Natore.

Her hair was like the distant dark nights of Vidisha
Her face, sculpted lines from Sravasti.
Like a ship-wrecked sailor who’s lost his compass
Finds a green patch of cinnamon island on a faraway sea,
I’ve seen her in darkness. Said she,
‘Where have you been for such a long time?’
Looking up with her bird’s-nest eyes,
Banalata Sen from Natore.

As the day drifts to an end, darkness descends
Like the sound of dewdrops.
Kites wipe the smell of sunshine off their wings.
As the colours of the day fade, manuscripts take over.
And then the glimmering fireflies gather for stories.
All the birds come home, all the rivers.
All exchanges come to an end. Darkness reigns
And there remains, to sit face to face, Banalata Sen.

[This translation was done long ago and published in INDIAN LITERATURE, the bimonthly journal of Sahitya Akademi]

VYAPAM Scandal and We

In May 2014, millions of Indians heaved a collective sigh of relief after dislodging a bunch of thieves from the seat of power in New Delhi. Now, after a year and the 42 mysterious deaths of people who were either accused or suspects or investigators in the Madhya Pradesh VYAPAM scandal, we cannot but feel we threw away the thieves only to elect a bunch of ruthless robbers to rule us. Please don’t accept or reject this rather strong view off-hand, but allow me to take you on a short journey along the bare facts of the case, which I have gleaned mainly from the online edition of the DNA newspaper dated 2 July 2015.

VYAPAM (an acronym for the Madhya Pradesh Vyavasayik Pariksha Mandal, aka MP Professional Examination Board) conducts recruitment exams for posts like sub-inspectors of police, typists, and for departments such as Agriculture, Women and Child Development, Jail, etc. It also conducts the Pre-Medical, Pre-Engineering, and other entrance tests for government colleges.

VYAPAM has been facing accusations of fraud since 2009, but the big revelation came in June 2013 when a racket that helped many examinees pass their pre-medical tests came to light. The fraudsters employed a range of modus operandi from exams being taken by impersonators (called “scorers” – this is a scam so vast that it had to invent its own lingo!), to answer scripts being written outside the exam hall, to final marks being tampered in the computers at the board headquarters.

For example, VYAPAM's Assistant Programmer CK Mishra, System Analyst Nitin Mahindra and his associate Ajay Sen, who were arrested at first, allegedly used to change original mark-sheets to get some examinees passed. Many documents including computer hard disks were seized from VYAPAM at the time of their arrest.

As the dots were joined, names of big businessmen as well as prominent politicians came up. Investigation based on the data obtained from the hard disks reveal that many candidates who appeared in the examinations had the backing of influential politicians. It involved names like the former CM Uma Bharti as well as lots of administrative officers. During his interrogation, Mahindra revealed that many students had been backed by the state's former education minister​ Laxmikant Sharma. Sharma was arrested and is still in jail.

It's the only scam in the history of India where close to 2000 accused have been taken into custody and yet, the hunt is far from over. These arrests mostly include students, parents, and some middlemen. Several news reports indicate that what has been uncovered so far reveals only the tip of the iceberg and masterminds behind the scam are out and trying to derail the investigations.

VYAPAM is being investigated by a Special Task Force (STF) under the supervision of a Special Investigation Team formed by the MP High Court. So far the proceedings by the STF don't seem promising, as all deaths of witnesses, suspects or accused have been categorised as NATURAL. As many as 42 PEOPLE connected to the case, most of them young and healthy, died either in accidents, or after a twenty-four hour illness, or “liver infections”, or simply committed suicide.

SIT Chief Chandresh Bhushan has reportedly admitted that over 40 deaths related to VYAPAM have taken place. Of these, 25 deaths related to cases that the SIT is probing. He reportedly said the possibility of murder cannot be ruled out in these 25 cases, and that these will be probed and a full report submitted to the High Court.

But the state government has called the deaths natural.  An, ex-CM and current Home Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Babulal Gaur recently said, rather philosophically, "All the deaths are natural deaths. Whether in jail or in a rail, everyone has to die someday".

Cases under VYAPAM scam date back to 2009. BJP has been in power in Madhya Pradesh since 2003. Their arch rivals, the Congress Party, past masters in corruption themselves, have asked ten questions to the MP Chief Minister. Since they are acknowledged experts in this business, let’s take their questions seriously. Here is a sample:

“The Vyapam scam was of a huge magnitude, wherein the future of 76 lakh was blocked, naked corruption took place, naked bribery was taking place, scorers were being appointed, papers were being changed. How could such a mammoth corruption scam be carried on without the complicity and knowledge of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan?

“An FIR in the Vyapam case was lodged on a close aide of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the then Technical Education Minister Laxmikant Sharma in 2013. After six months, he was arrested. CM’s former personal secretary Premchand Prasad too was arrested, but released on bail later. Will the Chief Minister explain why and how his close aides are involved in the matter?

“Shivraj Singh Chouhan … was the Medical Education Minister between December 2008 to March 2012 (sic). So why should the investigation … exclude the Chief Minister?

*

There is little doubt that loud proclamations notwithstanding, the present BJP government is as corrupt as the previous Congress government. The difference between the two can be brought out only by an earthy Bengali idiom: they are two sides of the same shit!

And returning to my original proposition, they present government is perhaps run by better organised and more ruthless criminals. How else can you explain scores of people being “bumped off” to protect the real crooks behind the VYAPAM scam safely hidden behind?

Kolkata

Tuesday, 07 July 2015