How to Edit Indian English - Ten Tips

chillibreeze writer — Prachi Joshi

Editing no longer remains a game of simply dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. Though versions of quick texting on cell phones, and Internet jargon, have subverted the whole essence of language decorum, there still exists a large community of puritans lusting after a language that is impeccably sewn with the grammar thread. Editing, staid though it sounds, is in effect a formidable crushing force, wherein the most innocuous sentence when passed through the scanner, reveals gargantuan anomalies that would normally escape the naked eye. While it is easy to get away with mistakes in colloquial usage, the written form is not so forgiving.

Editing is by no means ripping apart the work in consideration. Besides checking for errors, the editor’s job is to ensure the flow in the manuscript, making it more impactful and meaningful to the reader. English is no longer a foreign language in India. It is a medium of education in schools as well as a medium of communication across all offices – government and private. There is an emerging breed of writers of the English language from within India. Indian English, simply put, is the English spoken in India. The vocabulary and sentence structure of Indian English may vary from the regular, and the local expression may inadvertently slip into the text for want of a more befitting description.

While the thought, central idea and lucidity of Indian English may all be in place, there may remain some nuances in the written version which only an editing process can fine tune.

Spotting errors and setting them right
The fundamentals of editing the written text remain largely the same for any language, but there are some errors peculiar to works in Indian English. Running the microscope over each letter and punctuation mark, one needs to keep in mind the following errors which keep bobbing up at almost every turn of the page.

Sentence construction - The first error that comes to mind is that of sentence construction. For example, a sentence reads, “He found his lost phone walking on the road”. The sentence seems to read as if it were the phone walking on the road. The correct written form would be, “Walking on the road, he found his lost phone”. It is important for the editor to be on the lookout for these wrong sentence constructions.

Verb-Tense confusion - Indian English often trespasses the fine line between different tenses. The writer is thinking in the local dialect/language and is translating the same into English. This is often the main cause of verbs getting muddled in their usage. For some verbs like ‘shine’, the sentence “The boy would have shone like a diamond” would be absolutely correct while for verbs like ‘write’, the sentence “She would have wrote to you”, would be grossly incorrect.

Pronoun Errors - Indian English often stumbles on its use of pronouns. “It is on he that the family depends now”; Replacing he with him – “It is on him that the family depends now” – would rectify the error.

Plural errors - There are some collective nouns which in the regional language may be identified as a bunch but still may be described as a plural entity. Writers of Indian English may define ‘Poetry’ as ‘poetries’, ‘furniture’ as ‘furnitures’ and ‘information’ as ‘informations’. Editing Indian English would mean being able to eliminate such errors.

Subject-verb agreement errors - Any long sentence, with more than one subject thrown in, can easily fall prey to this particular error. For example consider the sentence – “Neither Rekha nor Ravi, despite their parents’ persuasion, were interested in the excursion”. Here we are talking of two people Rekha and Ravi. Any two subjects joined by neither-nor/either-or takes the singular verb, so the verb should be was and not were.

Similarly Indian English at times uses a singular verb in conjunction with two subjects. “Rahul and I am playing badminton this evening” – in this sentence the verb am is being used with the subject I, but here we are talking of two different subjects so the verb should be ‘are’.

Preposition pitfalls - Indian English is inspired by prepositions that are literally translated from the local language to English. To say “He is afraid from the dog” instead of “afraid of the dog” or “Post the letter on this address” instead of “Post the letter to this address”, is quite common. This would be a major landmine-zone for editors of Indian English to clear the field of.

Abbreviations typical in colloquial use - Words like ‘enthu’ for enthusiasm, ‘fundas’ for fundamentals, ‘arbit’ for arbitrary are used colloquially in Indian English. The editor, however, has to run the sieve through the text to purge it of such mutilated usage of words.

Adverb errors - Indian English can at times use its adverbs loosely especially when one more adverb is involved. “I looked extremely close at the map but could not find the place”. Having used ‘extremely’ the writer forgets that the next word is also with reference to the verb ‘looked’ and should be expressed as ‘closely’ and not ‘close’.

Spelling errors - There is no denying that the English spoken in India sounds different from what is spoken in other English speaking countries. Even within India, accents vary so much so that while someone may pronounce ‘zip’ as ‘jip’, others may pronounce it as ‘sip’ and these errors will permeate into writing as well. So ‘fool’ in place of ‘full’ can cause quite a stir.

Maintaining the flow and preserving the essence - While snipping the errors on a micro level, it is important for the editor to preserve the spirit of the writer’s text, bring into focus the highlights and allow the language to flow seamlessly in an effective manner.

Editor's note: Most articles submitted to Chillibreeze go through a selection process. Only 30 percent of submitted articles are accepted for publication on the Chillibreeze.com featured article list. All accepted articles are edited and proofread for glaring errors of punctuation and grammar. Sentence structure is changed in certain cases and sometimes, entire sections are rewritten. If you notice any errors that have slipped through the cracks, do let us know! (Email us at info at chillibreeze dot com).

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in August, 2011. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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—About our writer:

Prachi Joshi Johar holds master's in Advertising and PR management. She has varied writing and editing experience with an advertising portal, a newspaper and defence services magazines. She has written content for examville.com and idiscoveri. She has authored board games published by Frank Educational Aids and Scholastic India. She has also authored three logic books for ages 5, 9 and 14 also published by Scholastic India. She is the principal of Shaurya Army Preschool, Ranchi.

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