Sunday, April 7, 2013

Editorial License

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 You know I take both DC and ToI everyday.

Over the last one year ToI has been publishing needlessly long news items about the financial and other troubles of DC which bugged me somewhat. Recently DC admitted to her troubles and hoped they would be passing. Subsequently DC has been publishing Letters to its Editor praising her and giving moral support. So I thought I too would chip in since DC has been my favorite reading.  And mailed this Letter to DC last night:

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 DC & Rival


Sir:

I have been taking both DC and its Hyderabad pretender for the last 5 years. I take DC for its fabulous Edit and Op-Ed pages. Its essays there are illuminating unlike inane pieces by punsters that masquerade as humor. It has serious pieces from Dawn sans any illusory asha-nirasha syndrome. I take the other paper because, at 70, I am starved of affordable reading matter. Were DC twice its size (amen!) I wouldn't stoop to any next best.

G.P.Sastry


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And THIS is how my letter appeared in print this morning:


DC IS THE BEST


 I have been buying DC since the last five years. I like DC's Edit and Op-Edit pages. Its articles are highly illuminating unlike the shallow pieces carried by competitors. DC carries serious pieces from the Dawn sans the asha-nirasha business.  But I buy another paper too, as at 70 reading is my only past time (sic). If DC would have twice the number of pages, I wouldn't have bought any other newspaper.

G.P.Sastry
Hyderabad

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Here is Oliver Wendell Holmes on the subject of Editorial License:


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I am a very particular person about having all I write printed as I write it. 
I require to see a proof, a revise, a re-revise, and a double re-revise, or 
fourth-proof rectified impression of all my productions, especially verse. 
A misprint kills a sensitive author.  An intentional change of his text murders 
him.  No wonder so many poets die young!




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