| What reader-friendliness means in writing |
Education |
 Johnson, in one of his 'Idler' essays, observes that the world swarms with writers whose only wish is to be read and not studied. He lists among them the writers of news whose excesses he roundly condemns. That Johnson is not dismissive about 'reader-friendly' writing is clear; for he admits that writing news 'in its perfection requires a combination of qualities, that a man completely fitted for the task is not always to be found'.
 Dickens, a journalist himself before he became England's most popular novelist, prized the values of clarity, terseness and a lightness of touch, values he upheld in his magazine, 'Household Words'. In our own day, Philip Howard writes that a journalist who makes a habit of writing sentences that people have to read twice before they get his/her drift is in the wrong business. By this criterion, 'quite a lot of journalists are in the wrong business most of the time, and all journalists are in the wrong business some of the time'.
Another well-known columnist writes: 'I write for myself. I always ask: what would I want to read? I don't want to work too hard to read anything. If I read an economic story I don't want to have to struggle and go back and look at things and ask what it really means. A news story is not a textbook.' That, in a nutshell, is what reader-friendly writing means. It is simple, direct and accurate. It is informed writing that targets the common reader who is in a hurry.
 The sentence from a news item I have quoted tried to pack too many details into a single opening paragraph. The sentence reads:
The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a case against three Doordarshan officials and one Prasar Bharati official, besides the proprietor of a private company and two others, for fraudulently awarding commercial/marketing rights of Sunday feature films telecast from the DD's Kolkata centre and thus causing loss of crores to the Government.
The sentence is unwieldy. It can be split up into three sentences:
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Four government officials, three from Doordarshan and one from Prasar Bharati, besides three other persons, face action for alleged fraud in the award of marketing/commercial rights of Sunday feature films telecast from the Kolkata DD Centre.
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The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered cases against all seven, including the proprietor of a private company to which the rights were given away without calling for competitive bids, against all norms.
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The irregularity cost the government Rs 1.5 crores between March 1999 and February 2000.
 Reader-friendly writing stretches the resources of hacks to their utmost. Bacon's metaphor of the bee can be applied to the craft of journalism too. He says in his 'Novum Organum' that what is needed 'is not the method of an ant, which merely collects and uses, nor yet that of the spider, which spins cobwebs out of its own substance, but that of a bee, which transforms and digests the material it gathers by a power of its own'.
The only caveat is that the journalist should always guard himself against mankind's weakness: 'a corrupt love of the lie itself'. I shall conclude with the following quote (from a news item), which uses the words 'dabble' and 'involve' to good effect:
Prof Stringer does not dabble with politics but seems to be as deeply involved with the norms of good politics as she is with the issues of domestic violence, child poverty and health.
K S Mahadevan
Published on
26th August 2002
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