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INDLISH: The Book for Every English-Speaking Indian by Jyoti Sanyal is about fighting commercialese, officialese, and legalese and promoting the use of plain English. Indlish is a compilation of Sanyal's articles on plain English first printed in his column in The Statesman. Sanyal was formerly Dean of Asian College of Journalism, Bangalore, and an assistant editor with The Statesman, Calcutta. Now he is part of Clear English India, which encourages people to use good contemporary English instead of Raj-day commercialese, officialese, and legalese.
It is a great book that makes a lot of sense. It is easy-to-read, witty, clear, and concise. The author practices what he preaches. As the title says, it is a book that should be read by every English-speaking Indian. It is full of good advice about how to write English in simple, easy-to-read and easy-to-understand way.
The book gives a lot of examples of verbose and pompous English writing. It illustrates the abuse of the language—both intentional and accidental. It also points out why we (Indians) remain bound to literary Victorian English, which the later Victorians rejected. It explains how our East India Company legacy of commercialese fetters how we write English.
The book discusses the various ways the English language is abused. It provides clear and practical solutions to avoid the traps that obfuscates and makes our writing incomprehensible. It uses real world examples from LIC policy documents, newspaper and magazine reports, editorials, television reporting, etc. to show how the language is abused and how to correct those mistakes.
The book quotes the Fowler brothers—Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler—authors of The King's English. The Fowler brothers were great advocates of plain English. They told aspiring writers to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid and to:
Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched.
Prefer the concrete word to the abstract.
Prefer the single word to the circumlocution.
Prefer the short word to the long.
Prefer the English word to the one derived or borrowed from Italian, French and Spanish.
According to the author, if we must have a mantrafor good writing, let those rules laid down by Henry and Frank Flower serve.
The book gives a lot of practical ideas that will improve one’s communication clearer, crisp and interesting. A good read; I recommend this book to all who want to improve their English communication—both written and oral.
Book Details:
Editor: Jyoti Sanyal
Publisher: Viva Books Private Limited
Year: 2006
ISBN: 8130902818
Cover & Page Count: Paperback, 394 Pages
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