Our safety and wellbeing – our life in fact – depends on the degree to which we can trust the accuracy of the people we are dealing with. In July 1971, a Jumbo 747 jet was damaged on takeoff in San Francisco. Fortunately, no one was killed although there were serious injuries. Later the pilot testified that the flight dispatcher had told him his runway was 9,500 feet long. Although it was a fact, due to construction work, only 8,400 feet was available. It led to a miscalculated takeoff and the resultant accident.
The degree of accuracy maintained in a space program was illustrated by Von Braun: “The Saturn 5 has 5,600, 000 parts. Even if it had 99.9 percent reliability, there would still be 5,600 defective parts. Yet the Apollo 4 mission flew a textbook flight with only two anomalies occurring, demonstrating a reliability of 99.9999 percent. If an average automobile with 13,000 parts were to have the same reliability, it would have its first defective part in about 100 years.”
Inaccurate and imprecise language can lead to diplomatic incidents or even to war. The Charge of the Light Brigade, that famous 19th century disaster, has been attributed to vague and misunderstood orders. Lord Raglan’s aide may have compounded the confusion when he transmitted the order to Lord Lucan and gestured vaguely as to which guns were to be attacked. As a result, the Light Brigade rode into the very centre of the Russian army rather than against a redoubt where the Russians, in disarray, were removing their guns. Whatever the reason, of the 600 British cavalry men who made the charge, only 198 returned.
Special virtue
In the business world, accuracy is a special virtue. Those who make loose and exaggerated statements get more attention from their bosses. However, the habit of accuracy casts a long shadow ahead. That means its users are trusted and relied on by their employers who know the difference between a guess-man and a fact-man.
Like many other good human qualities, accuracy can be developed as an art. One method is to do your homework before giving your opinion. We are surrounded by people who claim to know everything. They mislead their masters all the time. In the United States somebody made a wild guess that Catholics have more children per family than Protestants. In fact, Baptists in America have the highest birth rate. The birth rate among Catholics was only a negligible fraction higher than among Protestants. Recently, during a local television program, a woman claimed that 400 out of 500 marriages end up in divorce. However, she had no statistics to prove her point.
There are many reference books in a good library. However, many readers do not make use of them. Apart from facts, accuracy is concerned with spelling, punctuation and grammar. Recently a leading national newspaper ran a headline: “Catching fish in troubled waters.” The correct expression, however, is “Fishing in troubled waters.” I learned it from my first editor who taught me that a door is not a doorway; that “no injuries were reported” does not mean “there were no injuries.” On the other hand, a person charged with murder is not necessarily a murderer.
Mad hatter
Dr Richard Asher told a group of medical writers, “Look up everything you quote. Some people refer to a “mad hatter” in “Alice in wonderland.” Actually, there is only a reference to a “hatter” in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Others refer to Sherlock Holmes saying, “elementary, my dear Watson.” However, the Holmes passage runs: “Excellent” said I; “elementary,” said he. Even the Bible has been misquoted by certain writers who mention an apple in the story of Adam and Eve, but Genesis mentions no apples.
Finding what is true is not always easy in the modern world. The accurate person very often withholds his judgment rather than hazard a wild guess. He is more willing to say “I do not now” than some of our astrologers. Only a wise man can tell you that he does not know something. It is not easy to make accurate predictions, but people do so all the time. To be accurate you should have a painstaking, caring, patient and reasonable faculty of mind. As Roger Swain says, “We have become masters of topography. We can rearrange the landscape to suit our fancy, and we can build whatever we please.” But having learned to move mountains we should not forget that mountains have the power to move us.”
A sense of accuracy should be instilled in young minds. Parents are all out to praise their children for what they have not done. One day parents brought their son and a printed book when they met an editor. Mother while giving the book to the editor said, “My son wrote it.” The editor said, “I like the title.” The child innocently said, “My father did it.” After glancing through the pages, the editor said, “It has a readable story.” The child said meekly, “My mother did it.” The editor understood that the child’s achievement was not his own. Such children expect the same from the rest of the world.
‘Needs improvement’
When we attended school, our compositions and later essays were rigorously criticized by teachers. If we failed to dot an “I” or cross a “t” the teacher used to shout at us. Today teachers write “NI” (needs improvement) in the margin when students make thundering mistakes. In the meantime parents demand report cards that tell us how hard our children work and how they stack up against their peers. Even adults who write books expect reviewers to praise them.
Accuracy is very important in communication. In fact there is an accuracy principle. Although it may seem to be rather ponderous, it is really a simple idea. Inaccurate communication does not achieve the desired results. Therefore it is important for both the sender and the receiver to strive for accuracy. In interpersonal communication there are two very effective ways. They are the receiver’s feedback and the sender’s role-taking. The two ideas have profound implications for understanding the difference between face-to-face and mass communication.
The first rule of journalism is “Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.” Burton Benjamin, a long-time producer of CBS News got caught up in an accuracy and fair-play conflict in the 1980s when CBS was accused of deliberately distorting information about the Vietnam War and General William Westmoreland in a news documentary. Due to criticism CBS executives commissioned Benjamin to investigate the charges and prepare a report. He found his network colleagues guilty of violating their own news standards. Benjamin later wrote a book about the affair called “Fair Play.”
Plain English
There is a movement to use plain English because it is accurate in its use of words. You must ensure that your sentence makes the point you want to make. It is clearly a matter of clarifying your meaning mentally before you write a word. In order to maintain accuracy, a good writer knows how to play safe. In other words, you must fully understand every word you use. Venturing outside the range of your understanding is dangerous. Young writers tend to use big words to impress the reader. You have to know big words and their meanings, but try to write simple and straightforward sentences. Writers who use plain English will use words that are appropriate to the context.
Most people are unable to think or express their ideas accurately. Confused thoughts and statements will make your life miserable. “God,” says Locke, “has not been so sparing to men, and make them barely two-legged creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational.” Although we are supposed to be rational animals, we do not think rationally. A young student asked his teacher, “How to think rationally?” The teacher asked him to study logic. The principles of logic regulates all sound thoughts. However, we do not need logic to teach us how to think.
If you are not accurate in what you say or write, nobody will respect you. You can take a cue from some politicians who come out with palpable lies and get away. From childhood you should be trained to tell the truth in whatever circumstances. Some state business ventures have no accurate statistics. They do it deliberately to get away with fraudulent transactions. If you are a straight man, avoid taking part in shady deals. If you get a salary at the end of the month, a journalist can afford to be inaccurate in his reporting. However, a freelance journalist has to come out with the truth. Otherwise he will have no readership or income.
Maintain accuracy in all your transactions. Then you will be branded as a reliable person and not an opportunist. Accuracy will bring you more friends and rewards unimaginable. [email protected]