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A manual on editing
by Mahbub Husain Khan
There are many books on editing and a career in editing in English that I have read, among the more famous being Keith Waterhouse's two volumes of autobiography City Lights and Streets Ahead and his manual on editing in English, On Newspaper Style. I did not come across such a book in Bangla till, very recently, I acquired a copy of Arunabha Sarkar's "Shampadanar Pratham Path" (First Lessons in Editing). This is a booklet rather than a book of seven chapters in 48 pages. It sets out for the readers the essence of modem journalistic tools and the nitty-gritty of editing newspapers in Bangladesh.
Arunabha's book is a classic manual on the use of language in today's daily newspapers in Bangladesh and is, to me, the standard style guide for journalists, a wide-ranging handbook of popular journalism - and a very entertaining book on the art of clear, correct and effective use of the language. Anyone interested in clear writing and the editing process necessary to achieve this can read Arunabha's book with profit. He is full of sound advice amusingly and pithily expressed, and the book is a guide of wider interest, for hacks and laymen alike. He has made the learning of grammar and writing for newspapers interesting. A youngster ambitious to be a good journalist will learn more from reading Arunabha's book than from any amount of tuition at a journalists' training school. This book should be required reading for anyone, young or old, who would use language rather than abuse it.
Arunabha, who has just reached 65 years of age in May, is one of our most versatile writers who has earned fame as a poet, but has also been writing essays, and regular columns. He has been a professional journalist over the last forty years, serving in Shangbad, lttefaq, Ganabangla, Janapad, Ganakantha, Banglar Bani, Jugantar, The New Nation, The Morning Sun and The Independent. As a freedom fighter he published a weekly named Shwadhinata. from the liberated area of Bangladesh. He is now the feature editor of the News Today.
'Shampadanar Pratham Path'
Published by the Bangladesh
Press Institute
December 2003, with its second printing on February 2006; 48 pages; Price Taka. 50
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