Preserve art of writing - Dr Mahathir

Dr Mahathir, who is also a prolific writer since his student’s days, observed that today's young generations preferred to shorten the words, stressing on the sound but not the spelling.

"For example, for is shorten to ‘4’ while you to ‘u’. It is fun as you can send long messages compressed into just a few letters. But over time, we lose the art of writing which is precious," he said.

"I hope the young people will seriously go back to writing properly ... My suggestion is that we should master the art of writing and the art of communication,” he said after launching the second Maybank Foundation-Perdana Leadership Foundation Writing and Photo Contest, here today.

Themed "Empowering Youth for a Better ASEAN", the contest challenges Malaysian youths aged between 13 and 21 years old to submit entries in essay, fiction and photo-essay contest, from now until Sept 16.

Top prizes for the contest include USD2,500 in cash, Macbooks, MPH book vouchers as well as E-Book Readers. Winners will also get the chance to meet with an established writer and photo-journalist at the prize-giving event in November.

Perdana Leadership Foundation executive director Tan Sri Nik Mohamed Nik Yaacob said there were no limits to the number of entries each person could submit and the entries could be in Bahasa Malaysia and English.

For the Essay Category, it is divided into two categories where Category A titled ‘The Most Important Leadership Lessons I Learnt in School’ (350-500 words) for young Malaysians aged between 13 and 17 years old while Category B, titled Volunteering Makes Us Better Leaders (750-1,000 words) for 18-21 years old.

Meanwhile for the fiction category, Category A (13-17 years old) is titled Heroism (350-500 words) while Category B (18-21 years old) is titled Courage (750-1,000 words).

For photo essays with title ASEAN Youth in Action, entries are for three to five photos for the 13 to 17 years old category and five to seven photos for (18 to 21 years old).