Here's a look at the front page of yesterday's Times of India, Delhi edition. It is a clean page. No, not spotless, but much cleaner than that of June 28. The lead (Road to chaos: Over 250 km to be dug up) has only one major bloomer:
The city government clamps a ban on road digging from June 15 to September 15 as digging adds to muck on the roads and increases chances of sewer and drain blockades.
A blockade is a barrier that stops people or vehicles from entering or leaving a place. A blockage, on the other hand, is the state of being blocked. It should have been blockages. The government is certainly not setting up drain blockades. A minor one:
Delhi urban development minister A K Walia said: "We are examining the proposal. It is a defence project so we cannot deny permission completely. We can consider granting permission when there is a dry patch."
You don't give partial permission to anyone. So the adverb completely is out of place. The minister probably meant an outright rejection was not possible; hence, it should have been outrightly. The copy otherwise is clean except for the sporadic dropping of the definite article. You don't drop the just because you think it might sound stupid if you use it. Especially, if you are inconsistent with its usage. The intro has no the before defence forces:
Get ready for a harrowing commute this rainy season. Over 250 km of Delhi's roads are likely to be dug up from July to September for a Rs 1,000-crore telecom project meant for defence forces.
The usage is correct in the eighth para:
The project was initiated to free a telecommunication spectrum at present being used by the defence forces for allocation to mobile phone services.
There are other instances too; you can find those yourself if you want to. ;) It would have been a better idea for the desk to work on the statement made by the DoT official:
DoT joint secretary M Sahu has already pushed the project and written to the government, stating, "In view of the extremely tight deadline and security related issues, as the proposed network would be for captive use of defence forces, it is requested that requisite clearances for fibre laying etc to MTNL may kindly be provided on immediate basis."
Such usage is called officialese and it is obvious, why. Bureaucrats, politicians, defence personnel among others have this morbid habit of communicating through convoluted sentences. It is a good sub's job to deconstruct these into words that are English. Moving down to the Ghaziabad story (G'bad among world's 10 most dynamic cities) — it is clean, quite clean. Just one redundancy:
"It's very strategically located on the old Grand Trunk Road. Not only does it attract a sizeable IT/ITES workforce from Noida, it is affordable for those who can't manage Delhi prices," he says.
Saying Ghaziabad is strategically located is enough. The adverb very is not used with adjectives and adverbs that already convey an extreme meaning. The adjacent single column (Jet-Sahara controversy lands in SC) is clean but the anchor (CM plays perfect host, bats for bats) is not — its inconsistent use of inverted commas. See this:
Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit is playing the perfect host these days. Never mind if the 'guests' are uninvited and even considered 'inauspicious'.
But this:
Well-wishers and astrologers aren't amused. Every time Dikshit has encountered a political crisis, the bats have been blamed. Though she laughs it off, astrologers have termed them a "bad omen".
And still this:
Senior leaders have often given her 'scientific advice' to get rid of them.
Standard usage: use single ones only for quotations within quotations. Thus: "When I say 'immediately', I mean some time before April," said the spokesman. Otherwise, use double quotes.
