The main objective of CIIL or the Bharatiya Bhasha Sansthan is, "to assist in and coordinate the development of Indian languages, to bring about the essential unity of Indian languages through scientific study and inter-linguistic research and to promote the mutual enrichment of the languages and thus contribute towards emotional integration of the people of this country." When decisions are taken to change the status of a language (for example when languages are added to the 8th schedule of the Constitution or introduced in school or mass media or become official languages for use in administration) it follows that in keeping with its enhanced status, the corpus in the language would also expand, as also the opportunities for the acquisition of those forms. In such situations with varieties of emerging forms, it becomes necessary to take stock of the existing standards and guide the language development process, even if that results in creating fresh standards or challenging old ones.
Amidst rapid social change in an era of technological advancement, many major Indian languages, with years of literary experience that provide unique accounts of social history in both prose and verse, are now in the phase of modernization, participating in the creation of new modes of discourse in the realm of varieties of knowledge texts and emerging multilingual contexts. Written language is gaining ground in this process of elaboration, not only thereby creating new registers but also posing fresh challenges to issues in standardization. The need for a Style manual in each of these languages is much felt so that the conventions of standardized written language are disseminated.
CIIL has come forward to shoulder this responsibility by involving the experts from each language. We strongly feel this series on style manuals would help in the creation of a benchmark for authors, translators, editors and media personnel as well as teachers and students and show them the way to write well and correctly too. In the course of language development, viewed in a broader perspective going beyond encouragement to creative literature, we need to work out different tools and conventions - and engage in major lexicographical initiatives or grammatical innovations to be effective in the new domains of use. Users of all these modernizing languages need a kind of help-book for better presentation of the written materials that are aesthetically appealing and easier to comprehend. A style manual provides such help for the community of authors and editors in making it possible to translate an idea into a printed and published document. Style manuals function as one of the major tools to standardize the written form of language.
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