ALAF KHAN
Avoid starting a paragraph with the First Person singular pronouns (I, My, & Mine). Loving oneself is no sin. but too much of it may bore the reader.
Guard against the use of Double Negatives. Remember that two Negatives make one Positive. Fair is shorter and safer than not unfair. Likewise, he is incapable of not telling the truth’ means that he can never tell a lie.
Keep your sentences short. Read aloud each sentence to yourself. Can you read it in one breath? Rewrite it as two sentences if you can’t read it in one breath.
Translate in your mother tongue each sentence you write. Does it mean what you want to say? Redraft it if it doesn’t.
Avoid illogical expressions such as numerous publications, incomparable achievements, myriad awards, countless medals, literally taken aback, unique IQ, etc. All these are impossibilities. How can you trust an author who can’t count his own publications, awards, and medals?
Observe word economy. Repeatedly is the same as again and again but only one word instead of three.
Avoid the verbs lie and lay. Their Past and Past Participle tenses are at times confusing. Likewise, avoid the word unclear and uninformed. They can be mistaken for nuclear and uniformed at first glance.
Prefer the simple to the pompous. Poor is shorter and simpler than impecunious, destitute, and indigent. The rich are as well off as the affluent. Twisted is no less twisted than convoluted and tortuous. And why should long be inferior to protracted?
Some plurals, such as Media, Agenda, Criteria, and Data, are now generally treated as singular nouns. Their singulars are virtually dead. Just remember the common Scottish name “MACDONALD”: M for Media, A for Agenda, C for Criteria, and D for Data. Their respective singulars are Medium, Agendum, Criterion and Datum. The word medium itself is an oddity. In one sense it is a noun, e.g. medium of instructions and medium of information. It can also be an adjective meaning “neither too little, nor too much”, e.g. medium height and medium strength. Medium in its adjectival sense cannot be conjugated the way we conjugate Tall, Taller, Tallest. Mediumer and Mediumest do not exist. Criterion, the singular of criteria, has been abandoned by most writers and mass media. A well-known scholar and media personality, (A. A.), recently wrote about some agendas in his column on Pakistanlink.com. That is like saying some mens or some womens. The word Agenda is itself the plural of Agendum. Arabic grammar has the name (Plural of Plurals) for it.
Some nouns have no plurals. These are always used in their singular form even for plural items. Offspring, furniture, equipment, information, aircraft and spacecraft are common examples. The words crafts and handicrafts in the sense of some skills or occupations are legitimate plurals.
The word goods is a plural noun that is not the plural of good. The word good may be an adjective or a noun. Consider this example: a good grasp of grammar will do much good to your writing. Here the first good is an adjective and the second good is a noun. Good as a noun is quantifiable but not countable. You can do much good to yourself is correct; doing yourself many goods is wrong.
Good packing does much good to your goods during shipment is a formula worth remembering. The first good is a simple adjective; the second good is a singular noun that has no plural, and goods is a plural noun having no singular.
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Never start a sentence with digits. A globally famous scholar, poet, etc erred when he wrote: “1984 had the world civilizations in perpetual conflict” (A.A., Paklink, 10 Oct 2022. He could, and should, have written: ‘The year 1984 had the world civilization in perpetual conflict’.
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Changing the location of a single word in the same sentence changes its meaning each time. Consider these statements:
Only I heard about this seminar this morning (i.e. no one else had heard of it).
I only heard about this seminar this morning (i.e. no written announcement in the media or written notice; just verbal information).
I heard only about this seminar this morning (i.e. heard of no other seminar).
I heard about this seminar only this morning (i.e. never heard about it before this morning)
Exactly the same eight words. Shifting the word only to different places gives the sentence four different meanings.
Guard against the use of Double Comparatives. Comparatively longer rope, Relatively less expensive shoes, and Relatively shorter road are ungrammatical. Longer and Less are themselves Comparative degrees of Long and Little.
He, She, & They. An epidemic of gender allergy has hit the English language worldwide. Writers and media folks no longer use the Pronouns he or she when referring to a man or a woman. It is now ‘they’ regardless of the number and gender of the person in question. This creates problems at times. Below are two examples. The first one is from The Guardian (London), 11 April 2019. The second one is my own effort:
(1). If a drunk driver kills a pregnant woman, they get charged twice (once for the death of the woman and once for the death of her unborn fetus).
‘They’ here is a mismatch for a single drunk driver. Calling a man he or a woman she is considered a gender bias. Writers now resort to the Third Person Plural Pronoun for even one male or one female. Mr. Smith, for instance, tells a friend that his wife (i.e. Mrs. Smith) is pregnant at long last. The friend hopes that God will bless them with a lovely baby if They will. Now, how many Gods do you need to bless Mr. and Mrs. Smith with a baby?
