YOU ASKED ME THIS QUESTION

Precision in expressing various levels of academic distinction

Question posted by Michelle F. Villanueva in the Forum’s Facebook page (February 22, 2014):

Please enlighten me because here in my new school, they keep on saying “with highest honors.” Is this correct? I believe this must be “with the highest honors.”

My reply to Michelle:

The precise phrasing is actually “with highest honors,” which is English for the Latin term summa cum laude. In comparison, “with high honors” is magna cum laude, and “with honors,” cum laude. In this context, the phrasing “with the highest honors”—made emphatic by the definite article “the”—doesn’t correspond to a specific honor level and rather sounds like a gratuitous stretch, perhaps even a boastful exaggeration.”

Check the posting in Jose Carillo’s Facebook Page

EARLIER RELATED QUESTION:
Should we use “First Honors” or “First Honor” in grade school?

Question e-mailed by Paul Gubac, Forum member (January 21, 2014):

What is the difference between “First Honors” and “First Honor”?

Is it right to use “First Honor” to refer to a Grade I pupil who has earned the highest distinction in class during Recognition Day? What is the appropriate or correct one to use, the one without “s” or the one with “s”?

My reply to Paul:

In the primary school system in the Philippines, the predominant usage is the singular form “First Honor.” I’m sure no one will question the use of “First Honor” for a Grade I pupil who has earned that highest distinction in class; it’s the norm for as back as I can remember. As an adult, however, a recipient of that distinction might be unable to resist the temptation to pluralize it to “First Honors” in a résumé or curriculum vitae, but it will most likely be an affectation—a vain attempt to overvalue what that honor is really worth.

In contrast, the usage of the term “First Honors”—plural—is pretty well standard in the undergraduate educational system of Great Britain and such Commonwealth countries as Australia, Canada, Republic of Ireland, and New Zealand as well as former colonies of England in Africa that are now independent nations. It’s part of an academic recognition system where a degree may be awarded “with honours” or “without honours” (note the “u” after the second “o,” a unique feature of British English spelling). In that system, there’s a class of honours degrees (based on a weighted average mark of the assessed work that a candidate has completed) classified as follows:

First class honours (1st)
Second class honours, upper division (2:1)
Second class honours, lower division (2:2)
Third class honours (3rd)
Ordinary degree (pass)

So, unless we are talking about undergraduate achievement in the UK and the Commonwealth countries, it would be highly advisable to just use the singular “First Honor.” To pluralize it to “First Honors” particularly in the Philippines could very well be perceived as an attempt to exaggerate the distinction, thus only serving to debase rather than emphasize it.

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The usage of “can” and “could” and “will” and “would”

A Hong Kong-based contributor to Jose Carillo’s English Forum, Isabel E., e-mailed me the following questions a few days ago:

“Joe, have you tackled ‘can’ and ‘could,” which are often misused? Come to think of it, ‘will’ and ‘would’ can also get confusing sometimes. And while I’m at it, have you ever discussed the quaint use of ‘sir’ before male first names by Filipino underlings towards their bosses? This is obviously a colonial hang-up that’s comical in its obsequiousness.”

My reply to Isabel E.:

Yes, I’ve tackled “can” and “could” and “will” and “would” several times in the Forum, but for those who still get baffled by these modals, I’ll now quickly discuss their usage by way of review.

As we learn early in English grammar, “can” and “could” convey the idea of ability, possibility, permission, or potential; “can” is the present-tense form, as in “She can play the piano,” but it inflects to “could” in the past tense,” as in “There was a time when she could play the piano.”

On the other hand, “will” and “would” convey the idea of desire, choice, willingness, consent, or habitual or customary action; “will” is the present-tense form, as in “We will follow his orders without question,” but it inflects to “would” in the past tense, as in “During his first year in office, we would follow his orders without question.” We must keep in mind that the modal use of “will” is distinct from its use for expressing simple futurity, as in “She will leave for Singapore at noon tomorrow.”

Apart from these basic uses, these four modal forms can convey various other senses and nuances.

In particular, “can” is also used (a) for declaring what can be perceived by the senses, as in “I can taste a hint of lime in this drink”; (b) for saying what can possibly be done: “You can sleep all day if you want”; (c) for conveying the idea of of being allowed to do something or having the right or power to do something: “You can live in my apartment while I’m away”; and (d) as a mark of civility or politeness when making spoken requests or when offering or suggesting something: “Can you tell me how to refuse his offer without offending him?” (This is in contrast to bluntly saying, “Tell me how to refuse his offer without offending him.”).

On the other hand, “could” is used to make a deferential or more polite request, offer, or suggestion: “Could you tell me how to refuse his offer without offending him?” This use of “could” instead of “can” is largely dictated by the speaker’s awareness that the person being addressed is of superior rank or higher social station.

In the same token, the modal “would” is used to express politeness and deference in conveying intent or desire, as in “Would you consider my daughter’s application for internship?” This is as opposed to the straightforward suggestion or pointed request conveyed by “Will you consider my daughter’s application for internship?”

One more thing: the past-tense modals “would” and “could” are used in indirect speech that’s introduced by a verb in the past tense. This is the case in “Archimedes declared that he could move the world if only he had the lever to lift it” and in “The erring chief executive pledged that he would stop any more unlawful spending.”

These are about all that we absolutely need to know regarding the usage of the modals “can” and “could” and “will” and “would.”

As to the the quaint use of “sir” before male first names by Filipino underlings towards their bosses, I find it disagreeable myself but I don’t feel qualified to discuss it. Perhaps some astute Filipino social scientist can enlighten us about this quirk in the language of the Philippine workplace.
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This essay first appeared in Jose Carillo’s “English Plain and Simple” column in the February 8, 2014 issue of The Manila Times © 2014 by Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

FURTHER READINGS:
“Can” and “could”

Uses and meanings of “would” in the present tense

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When does it become a must to split infinitives for clarity's sake?

Question raised by C. Gordon Hale regarding the splitting of infinitives (January 11, 2014):

Mr. Hale posted this response to my January 4, 2014 column in The Manila Times, “Putting an end to the ‘at the end of the day’ plague”:

Thank you for condemning the excessive use of “at the end of the day” and similarly annoying clichés. But not only in the Philippines have both spoken and written English become badly corrupted by vulgar colloquialisms and abysmal grammar. The state of contemporary English usage in the U.S. is truly lamentable!

Please forgive me, but I couldn’t help but react to the split infinitives in your paragraphs 9 and 10—“to never again”—really?

My reply to C. Gordon Hale:

I expressed my appreciation to Gordon for sharing my serious concern over the “at the end of the day” plague, and as to my use of split infinitives, I commented in passing: “I actually split them at will for stylistic purposes, but I’m also aware that splitting infinitives indiscriminately can be bad for prose.”

Let me now address more fully the matter of splitting infinitives.

To put things in context, I would like to emphasize that although most authorities in modern English grammar have dropped the objection to split infinitives, their usage continues to invite controversy. My personal position though is that unless splitting an infinitive results in bad syntax or semantics, taking recourse to it shouldn’t be cause for debate. 

Consider the two instances where I appear to have split an infinitive in the paragraphs referred to by Gordon (italicizations below mine):

In the first paragraph, Gordon appears to consider the phrase “to, among others, curb their predilection for using ‘at the end of the day’” as an infinitive phrase split by the adverbial “among others.” Grammatically, however, it’s not a split infinitive phrase at all, for its “to” is actually not an infinitive marker but a preposition of purpose that links the verb “designed” to its complement “curb their predilection.” Even assuming for the sake of argument that the form in question is an infinitive phrase, it still would be necessary to split it for clarity’s sake. For when unsplit, that phrase would read as follows: “an English reorientation program designed, among others, to curb their predilection...” This gives the wrong idea that several English reorientation programs were designed for one purpose, not only one program designed for several purposes.

In the second paragraph, to make the statement more emphatic, I split the infinitive phrase “to invite talk-show guests” by inserting “never again,” resulting in the genuine split infinitive “to never again invite talk-show guests who habitually spout them.” Now see how confusing that statement becomes when the infinitive phrase is unsplit and the adverbial “never again” is placed ahead of it: “…TV and radio network owners should seriously consider never again to invite talk-show guests who habitually spout them.” Here, “never again” has become a squinting modifier, seemingly modifying both the verb “consider” and the infinitive “to invite.” 

That statement gets even more troublesome in tone and syntax when, just to avoid splitting the infinitive, “never again” is positioned after it: “…TV and radio network owners should seriously consider to invite talk-show guests never again who habitually spout them more than, say, twice in a row during a particular show.”

We thus can see that unless splitting the infinitive results in bad syntax or semantics, it really should be considered airtight usage.   
---------    
This essay first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 11, 2014 issue © 2014 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved.

RELATED READINGS:
Splitting infinitives and the misuse of “whom”

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Should we use the term "First Honors" or "First Honor" in grade school?

Question e-mailed by Paul Gubac, Forum member (January 21, 2014):

What is the difference between “First Honors” and “First Honor”?

Is it right to use “First Honor” to refer to a Grade I pupil who has earned the highest distinction in class during Recognition Day? What is the appropriate or correct one to use, the one without “s” or the one with “s”?

My reply to Paul:

In the primary school system in the Philippines, the predominant usage is the singular form “First Honor.” I’m sure no one will question the use of “First Honor” for a Grade I pupil who has earned that highest distinction in class; it’s the norm for as back as I can remember. As an adult, however, a recipient of that distinction might be unable to resist the temptation to pluralize it to “First Honors” in a résumé or curriculum vitae, but it will most likely be an affectation—a vain attempt to overvalue what that honor is really worth.

In contrast, the usage of the term “First Honors”—plural—is pretty well standard in the undergraduate educational system of Great Britain and such Commonwealth countries as Australia, Canada, Republic of Ireland, and New Zealand as well as former colonies of England in Africa that are now independent nations. It’s part of an academic recognition system where a degree may be awarded “with honours” or “without honours” (note the “u” after the second “o,” a unique feature of British English spelling). In that system, there’s a class of honours degrees (based on a weighted average mark of the assessed work that a candidate has completed) classified as follows:

First class honours (1st)
Second class honours, upper division (2:1)
Second class honours, lower division (2:2)
Third class honours (3rd)
Ordinary degree (pass)

So, unless we are talking about undergraduate achievement in the UK and the Commonwealth countries, it would be highly advisable to just use the singular “First Honor.” To pluralize it to “First Honors” particularly in the Philippines could very well be perceived as an attempt to exaggerate the distinction, thus only serving to debase rather than emphasize it.

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How can we help?

Question by Nathan_Yell, Forum member (January 7, 2014):

Dear Mr. Carillo,

I’ve been a member of the forum since 2011. And I am truly grateful for the wealth of knowledge you share on your site. I want to know if there’s anyway I can help the site so it would keep running? 

Thank you.

My reply to Nathan_Yell:

Thank you for asking if there’s any way you can do to help keep this Forum running. Still the best way is this: Whenever you come across a particularly objectionable English misuse (whether in the traditional and social media, in books, or in public forums), don’t hesitate to make a posting in the Forum about it. Quote the material and provide a link to its source. That way, the Forum can further widen its dragnet for instances of English misuse, put more of them up for scrutiny in the Forum’s discussion boards, and share the correct usage with Forum members and with everybody else seeking to write or speak English better.

Another way is to share your views or insights, whether pro or con, whenever a debatable point about the English language is raised in the discussion boards. This will ensure lively two-way or three-way, even four-way discussions in the Forum—the more discussants, the better. In truth, I don’t wish to be the only one answering questions raised in the Forum or responding to challenges to the validity of a particular English usage. I’d like to emphasize that I don’t have a monopoly of wisdom in the English language; indeed, I’ll be forever a student of English, always striving—like most everybody else—to write it better and speak it more fluently even as I share whatever learnings about English I’ve acquired in the course of my work as a writer, editor, and communicator.

And one more thing, Nathan_Yell: As you must have noticed, the Forum isn’t confining its discussion boards to the written word alone. Let me therefore take this opportunity to invite Forum members to also contribute particularly instructive or telling photos, audio-visuals, artworks, and cartoons on English use and misuse from published sources. Links to published visuals, with proper attribution to the author and source publication, can be directly posted in the discussion boards.  

Again, Nathan_Yell, thank you for your offer to help. With greater participation by members like you, the Forum definitely can keep its wealth of knowledge growing and become even more useful to learners and researchers of English grammar and usage.

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What does the expression “if anything” mean?

Question by jonathanfvaldez, Forum member (November 18, 2013):

Hi Joe,

It’s been a while since I last visited and I’m glad to see that all is well (at least in the Forum). Like many of our kababayans here in Los Angeles, CA, my family and I are glued to the TV watching broadcasts on the progress of the relief efforts in the areas devastated by Yolanda. We all hope and pray for our countrymen especially in those hard-hit areas.

More than twice, I’ve come across the phrase “If anything,” my latest “meeting” with it being this afternoon when I read a study with this excerpt: “I do not believe that substituting more precise words and phrases for an equivocal word would decrease the scientific quality of the writing.  If anything, I felt that the precision of the communication process was improved in the 110 instances in which the ‘e-word’ was replaced.  Equivocal words can always be replaced by other words or phrases that convey a more precise meaning in a scientific context.” (italics mine)

Please clarify when, how, etc. “If anything” is used. I Googled it but I think it’s better to consult with the word maven.

Thanks.

Jonathan

My reply to jonathanfvaldez:

I’m sorry to say that all’s not well in the Philippines today after the devastation wrought by the quelling of the MNLF rebellion in Zamboanga, by the Bohol 7.2-magnitude earthquake, and now by Typhoon Yolanda. Many parts of the nation are in a veritable state of calamity—people, habitations, commerce, infrastructure, governance, the public sphere and all—and I don’t think we’ll be seeing the end to it in the immediate future. We just have to brace ourselves for the long, backbreaking effort towards recovery and rehabilitation.

Now regarding your question about the usage of “if anything” in this excerpt that you presented:

The idiom “if anything” is used to convey the sense that someone or something is different when the speaker isn’t absolutely sure if there really is any change or difference. The closest meaning of it that I can think of is “if at all” or, in a more comparable or measurable sense, “if in any degree,” as in “If anything, the government response to the Typhoon Yolanda disaster has shown that the Philippines is never too ready for the severe weather disruptions projected to be brought about by climate change” or “Your flawed solution to that quadratic equation has demonstrated that, if anything, you need a refresher course in advanced algebra.”

In Tagalog, I would think that the closest equivalent idiom to “if anything” is “kung tutuusin,” as in “Kung tutuusin, mukhang walang kalatoy-latoy ang tugon mo sa napakalaking problemang hinaharap ng bayan ngayon” (“If anything, it looks like your response is too ineffectual for the huge problem being faced by the country today.”) 

What we have to keep in mind is that the usage of “if anything” suggests tentatively that something may be true—often the opposite—of something previously said or implied. This is actually the case with the passage that you provided. The declaration of the first sentence, “I do not believe that substituting more precise words and phrases for an equivocal word would decrease the scientific quality of the writing,” is supported by the next sentence, whose use of “if anything” serves to emphasize that such word or phrase substitutions indeed can improve rather than impede the communication process.

I hope that this has adequately clarified the usage of “if anything” for you.

Rejoinder by jonathanfvaldez (November 20, 2013):

Thanks, Joe. Yes, the idiom “If anything” is much clearer now.

I’m sorry for my “all is well” statement. I simply misspoke. What I wanted to convey was (at least) the Forum is still going strong. As the kids might say, “my bad.”

BTW, is “first foray” redundant, given that one definition of “foray” is “an initial attempt”?

Thanks.

Jonathan

My reply to jonathanfvaldez’s rejoinder:

The phrase “first foray” isn’t redundant at all. The sense of “foray” is not “an initial attempt” but “a brief excursion or attempt, especially outside one’s accustomed sphere” or “a sudden or irregular invasion or attack for war or spoils.” “Foray” conveys not “initialness” but “briefness” or “suddenness.” Thus, the use of “first foray” in the following sentence is definitely not redundant: “Her first foray into fashion modeling was forgettable, but her second made her so widely acclaimed as to be considered international beauty queen material.”

Comment by BenK, new Forum member (November 21, 2013):

If I may jump into this conversation, I’d like to share a personal rule based on how I understand “if anything.” I have always defined it—and I make no assertion that I am correct, only that I am consistent—as “if [what I am about to explain in the sentence that follows has any meaning/is indicative of] anything,” [then it means/indicates this]. To check it, a slightly longer phrase can be substituted; if it makes sense, “if anything” is okay, if not, go back and try again:

- “If this/that means anything”
- “If this/that teaches/tells us anything”
- “If this/that will result in anything”

...and so on.

My reply to BenK:

BenK, I absolutely agree with your method for figuring out the sense of the phrase “if anything” in a sentence. I could hardly improve on it.

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What does the term “Philippine Area of Responsibility” mean?

Request by justine aragones, Forum member, posted in my Personal Messages box (November 8, 2013):

Dear Sir Carillo,

I hope you are all right during this stormy evening.

I remember the discussion on Philippine Area of Responsibility and its distinction from the Philippine boundaries. Help me, sir, to find that posting so I can understand better that technical term used by PAGASA meteorologists.

Thank you.

My reply to justine aragones:

Your request is very timely so I am reposting below the Forum discussion on the term “Philippine Area of Responsibility” that started on November 6, 2009:

Why not “soil” or “land” for “area of responsibility”?

Question from Mr. Leoncio Contreras, someone of Filipino descent who presumably now lives overseas:

Let me ask you something.

I get so annoyed when I hear from TV anchors and read in the print media the statement “The typhoon has entered the Philippine area of responsibility.”

I believe it’s the obligation [of PAGASA] to paraphrase “area of responsibility.” I think the more appropriate way to word that sentence is, “The typhoon has entered Philippine soil.”

Please advise.

My reply:

Dear Mr. Contreras:

After looking into the origins and semantics of the term “area of responsibility,” I think we are well-advised not to tinker with it. Offhand, I’ll already say that I could find neither a suitable paraphrase nor even a synonym that comes close to what it means.

In general terms, the Area Of Responsibility (AOR) defines an area with specific geographic boundaries for which a person or organization bears a certain responsibility. The term originated from the United States military but is now used in oceanography and weather forecasting as well.

For the Philippines, in particular, its area of responsibility isn’t meant to define its internationally recognized territory, and it isn’t a measure either of its land mass or what you refer to as “Philippine soil.” This is because as all of us know, the Philippines is an archipelago of 7,100 islands, each irregularly jutting out from sea, and the nation’s share of territory on the globe actually extends way beyond the shorelines of these islands. Indeed, although the Philippines has a total land area of 300,000 sq. km (115,830 sq. miles), the so-called “Philippine area of responsibility” covers something like 9-11 multiples of that area in terms of sea and land combined.

For those who know at least a smattering of spherical geometry, the Philippine Area of Responsibility or PAR is that part of the world map “bounded by rhumb lines on the Philippine Tropical Cyclone Tracking Chart/Map or imaginary lines on the surface of the earth that makes equal oblique angles with all meridians joining the following points: 25°N 120°E, 25°N 135°E, 5°N 135°E, 5°N 115°E, 15°N 115°E, 21°N 120°E and back to the beginning.” The initials N and E refer to the compass directions “north” and “east,” the superscript “o” after the numbers stands for “degrees of the Earth’s arc,” and the term “rhumb lines” means “any of the points of the mariner’s compass.” All this may sound like science mumbo-jumbo, of course, so it’s much better to just visually check out this area by logging on to PAGASA’s website.  

Here’s PAGASa's map of the Philippine area of responsibility:

Anyway, within the Philippine area of responsibility, the PAGASA is mandated to monitor tropical cyclone activity and to make the necessary warnings. It has to issue bulletins every six hours for all tropical cyclones within this area that have made or are anticipated to make landfall within the Philippines, or every 12 hours when cyclones are not affecting land.

So don’t get annoyed anymore when PAGASA repeatedly uses the term “Philippine area of responsibility.” Those hardy weather forecasters of ours aren’t really having big airs when they use that term. They don’t really have much choice—or would you rather they pounce on you with “AOR, AOR” or “PAR, PAR” ad infinitum whenever a typhoon’s coming?

Postscript to Forum members:

The Philippine media have gotten used to referring to the Philippine weather bureau as PAGASA, which oxymoronically means “hope” in Tagalog—obviously an inappropriate name because of the dire news that the bureau usually brings to the public during the typhoon season in the Philippines. PAGASA is, of course, an acronym for the kilometric official name Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, which, in turn, is rendered in Filipino as the equally kilometric, strange-sounding Pangasiwaan ng Palingkurang Atmosperiko, Heopisikal at Astronomiko ng Pilipinas (PPAHAP). The acronym of this Filipino name doesn’t spell any nice existing word and doesn’t resonate, of course, so it’s understandable why the English acronym is the one that has gained currency instead. As to the full Filipinized name of the weather bureau, I know that this name is a well-meaning translation of the English, and I have gotten comfortable with all of the Filipinized terms in that name except for one—Palingkuran. I don’t know if you know what I have in mind, but that new Filipino coinage does sound like something else—something fetid—to me. Can’t we think up a better word? What do you think?

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Some syntax variations in English evoke practically the same sense

Question by Miss Mae, Forum member (November 2, 2013):

Why should there be an in between the words “speaking” and “English” in the second sentence below but nothing between the same words in the first sentence?

“The last time I was heard speaking English fluently was when my grade-school assistant principal visited me in the ICU.”

“But that incident made me conscious of a divide between Filipinos who prefer speaking in English and those who prefer speaking in Tagalog.”

(These are quotes from my posting in the Advocacies section, “When speaking in English becomes a problem,” on October 27, 2013.)

My reply to Miss Mae:

Hmm… a very interesting grammar question.

In the first sentence, “The last time I was heard speaking English fluently was when my grade-school assistant principal visited me in the ICU,” the preposition “in” is not used between the verb “speaking” and “English” because here, “English” is being used as an adjective. With such a construction in the form “verb + adjective + adverb,” the implied sense is that the speaker speaks English fluently as a matter of course.

On the other hand, in the second sentence, “But that incident made me conscious of a divide between Filipinos who prefer speaking in English and those who prefer speaking in Tagalog,” the preposition “in” is used between “speaking” and “English” and between “speaking and “Tagalog” because in both instances, “English” and “Tagalog” are being used as objects of the preposition “in.” In this form, the implied sense is that the speaker has a choice of speaking either in English or Tagalog, and vice versa. This sense is, in fact, emphasized by the verb “prefer,” in such a way that the preposition “in” becomes functionally necessary to link the verb with the alternative objects “English” or “Tagalog.”

In informal English, however, these grammatical distinctions often get blurred without causing sentence dysfunction. In the first sentence you presented, the phrase “speaking English fluently” can also use “in” without raising eyebrows and yield practically the same sense: “The last time I was heard speaking in English fluently was when my grade-school assistant principal visited me in the ICU.” So with knocking off the “in” in the phrases “prefer speaking in English” and “prefer speaking in Tagalog” in the second sentence: “But that incident made me conscious of a divide between Filipinos who prefer speaking English and those who prefer speaking Tagalog.” English has the flexibility and tolerance for such minor deviations in syntax in evoking the same sense.

Follow-up question by Miss Mae, Forum member (November 4, 2013):

Wait. Let me understand.

If the reason why there is no in between the words "speaking" and "English" is because the latter was used as an adjective, then why there is also no in between the words "live" and "is" in the sentence below? 

Quote from: Miss Mae on October 27, 2013, 12:20:04 AM
“About 140 kilometers away from the city where I live is Dubai.”

 My reply to Miss Mae:

There’s no need for the preposition “in” in this sentence that you presented:

“About 140 kilometers away from the city where I live is Dubai.”

It’s because in the phrase “where I live is Dubai,” the noun “Dubai” is actually not an object of the preposition; instead, it is the subject of the sentence. You see, that sentence is what’s known as an inverted sentence, with the following construction as its normal form:

“Dubai is about 140 kilometers away from the city where I live.”

In this normal form, “Dubai” is the subject and the whole phrase “is about 140 kilometers away from the city where I live” is the subject complement that serves to describe it.

But let’s address the question as to whether the preposition “in” might hypothetically be needed in the original sentence you presented. Yes, it might, but that “in” would need an object of the preposition, say “my Filipina friend,” to function properly, as in the following sentence:

“About 140 kilometers away from the city where I live in with my Filipina friend is Dubai.”

In that form, however, “live in” becomes a prepositional idiom that could mean “to live in one’s place of employment” or “live in another’s home” or, in the derogatory sense, to live with a member of the opposite sex without benefit of marriage—an arrangement that’s legally known as “cohabitation.”

Another thing: Even if that reconstruction is grammatically and semantically airtight, it would be much more readable if it’s also rendered in the normal form as we had done to your original sentence. That normal form would read as follows:

“Dubai is about 140 kilometers away from the city where I live in with my Filipina friend.”

I trust that settles this matter about the usage of “in” for you.

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When subjunctive sentences are needed and how to construct them

Question posted in my Personal Messages box by Nesaga, new Forum member (October 6, 2013):

Please explain the rules on the proper use of “was” or “were” in “If I (were, was)…” sentences, as in “If I were you, I will...” or “If I was there, I would...”

It has been such a long time that I can’t even recall the term on this subject.

Thank you very much.

My reply to Nesaga:

The verb “be” is in the so-called subjunctive mood when it consistently takes the plural past-tense form “were” rather than “was” or “is” in sentences like “If I were you, I would have accepted that job offer,” “If Marian were taller, she’d qualify for the that beauty contest,” and “I wish Edwin were more discreet in his personal affairs.”

Recall now that mood is that aspect of the verb that expresses the state of mind or attitude of the speaker toward what he or she is saying. There are three such moods in English: the indicative mood and the imperative mood, both of which deal with actions or states in factual or real-world situations; and the subjunctive mood, which deals with actions or states only as possible, contingent, or conditional outcomes of a want, wish, preference, or uncertainty expressed by the speaker.

Let’s do a quick review of all three of these moods to put our discussions in full context.

The indicative mood. This mood conveys the idea that an act or condition is (1) an objective fact, (2) an opinion, or (3) the subject of a question. Statements in the indicative mood seek to give the impression that the speaker is talking about real-world situations in a straightforward, truthful manner. Verbs in this mood take their normal inflections in all the tenses and obey the subject-verb agreement rule at all times.

Here are examples of indicative sentences: “The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,100 islands” (stating an objective fact); “Several senators implicated in the pork-barrel scam have outrageously proclaimed ignorance despite the preponderance of the evidence against them” (stating an opinion); and “Who then plundered all those millions from the government coffers?” (posing a question).

The imperative mood. This mood denotes the attitude of a speaker who (1) demands or orders a particular action, (2) makes a request or suggestion, (3) gives advice, or (4) states a prohibition. This mood uses the base form of the operative verb (the verb’s infinitive form without the “to”), and is most often used in second-person, present-tense sentences that use an elliptical subject or the unstated second-person pronoun “you.

Here are examples of imperative statements; “Abolish the pork barrel unconditionally!” (demanding a particular action); “Please keep quiet” (making a request or suggestion); “Take this pill for a good night’s sleep” (giving advice); and “Don’t pick the flowers” (stating a prohibition).

The subjunctive mood. This mood, which only has present-tense and past-tense forms, performs the following tasks: (1) indicate a possibility (2) express a desire or wishful attitude, (3) express insistence on a particular action, (4) express doubt about a certain outcome, (5) describe an unreal situation or an idea contrary to fact, or (6) express a request or suggestion. When used with the auxiliary verbs “could,” “would,” and “should,” the subjunctive can convey even more intricate and sophisticated shades of possibility and conditionality.

Now we are ready to take up the specific rules for constructing sentences in the subjunctive mood:

(1) When indicating a supposition or possibility. Regardless of whether the doer of the action is singular or plural, verbs consistently take the subjunctive plural past tense in “if”-clauses that indicate a supposition or possibility: “If I were to join you in Tokyo, I’d have to file a leave from my job.” “You’d all loss your jobs if Rowena were to implicate you in that funds anomaly.”

(2) When expressing a desire or wishful attitude. Verbs consistently take the subjunctive plural past tense in “that”-clauses that follow main clauses expressing a wish: “I wish (that) she were more reliable.” “I wish (that) I were the team leader.” “How I wish (that) you were home now!” The wish or desired outcome in such constructions is neither a present reality nor a future certainty.

(3) When expressing insistence on a particular action. Regardless of whether the doer of the action is singular or plural, verbs consistently take the subjunctive plural present tense in “that”-clauses that insist that a particular action be taken: “I insist that everyone vacate the room right now.” “I demand that Francis stop that transaction at once.”

(4) When describing the outcome of an unreal situation or idea contrary to fact. The subjunctive can be used to denote a hypothetical state or outcome given a certain condition that is unreal or contrary to fact. Such conditions will often be indicated by the word “if” or “wish”: “If the moon were not there, there wouldn’t be tides on Earth.” Without “if,” such constructions can sometimes take an inverted syntax: “Were the moon not there, there wouldn’t be tides on Earth.”

One notable exception that doesn’t call for subjunctive usage is when verbs like “wonder” or “ask” are used to express indirect questions. Even if the act or state described is evidently contrary to fact, the indirect question should be constructed in the indicative mood: “We wondered if the testimony she gave was [not “were”] truthful in all respects.” “I was surprised that my friend in Norway asked me if the Philippines was [not “were”] part of the Asian mainland.”

(5) When expressing doubt about certain appearances or raise a question about an outcome. Statements that cast doubt on observed behavior or raise a question about a presumed outcome often take the subjunctive form: “She behaved as if she were the only cultured person in class.”

I hope that this has adequately clarified the subjunctive usage in English for you.

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What’s the difference between “for ever” and “forever”?

Question by spelling, Forum member (September 16, 2013):

Hi there,

What is the difference between “for ever” and “forever”?

Thank you.

My reply to spelling:

For those who use the American English Standard, “for ever” doesn’t exist in the contemporary lexicon and would be considered a misspelling of the one-word “forever,” which can either be an adverb or a noun. As an adverb, “forever” means for a limitless time, as in “Only a fool would want to live forever”; as a noun, it means a seemingly interminable time or excessively long time, as in “It took Nancy forever to get herself dressed for her first date.”

Since I know you to be based in South Africa, however, you must have had greater exposure to British English than to American English. I therefore presume that you know that while the Oxford English Dictionary cites “forever” as the predominant usage, it also recognizes “for ever” as an adverb that—like “forever”—also means eternally, continually, or incessantly. You will find an interesting discussion of the usage of “for ever” in Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman’s The Grammarphobia Blog.

Despite the fact that “for ever” is still extant in the British English lexicon, it has progressively gone into disuse. I don’t think it will be missed if it finally goes into total oblivion. After all, “for ever” is pronounced in practically the same way as “forever,” and, whether you are using British English or American English, writing “for ever” in your correspondence or published work today will surely mark you as a diehard nonconformist.

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The excessive use of ellipses beclouds the sense of sentences

Question e-mailed by Jhumur Dasgupta (August 29, 2013):

Dear Jose,

I don’t know how to post this query in your Forum, so I am mailing my question instead. Can you please explain whether the sentence below from a news agency is correct? If I am not wrong, I see (that) the phrase “moving closer to banning its broadcasts” does not refer to the appropriate subject. 

The sentence in question:

“Egypt’s official news agency says the interim government has deemed Al-Jazeera's local affiliate a national threat, moving closer to banning its broadcasts.”

Regards,

Jhumur

My reply to Jhumur:

Yes, surprising as it may seem, this admittedly confusing sentence construction from Associated Press is acceptable by modern journalistic standards: “Egypt’s official news agency says the interim government has deemed Al-Jazeera's local affiliate a national threat, moving closer to banning its broadcasts.” It’s actually a doubly ellipted version of the following sentence, which dropped the relative pronoun “that” twice for brevity and ease of articulation:

“Egypt’s official news agency says that the interim government has deemed Al-Jazeera’s local affiliate a national threat and that it is moving closer to banning its broadcasts.”

In this complete, unellipted form, it’s very clear that the doer of the action “moving closer to banning its broadcasts” is “the interim government,” which is the same one that “has deemed Al-Jazeera's local affiliate a national threat.” Many English-language journalists engage in this kind of journalistic shorthand and expect readers to just supply the missing “that” mentally each time it is dropped. This type of ellipsis can work rather nicely and can make the sentence streamlined and more succinct when there’s only one action and one doer of the action, as when we drop the second action, “moving closer to banning its broadcasts,” from the original sentence that you presented:

“Egypt’s official news agency says [that] the interim government has deemed Al-Jazeera’s local affiliate a national threat.”

As a rule, elliptical sentences consist of two independent clauses, one containing the grammar elements the other has left out. The independent clause with the missing elements is the elliptical clause—an abbreviated adverb clause stripped of its subject and verb. When done sensibly, ellipsis can gracefully knock off repetitive words and phrases from a sentence, thus making it simpler and easier to read.

The problem though is that some news reporters and their editors just don’t seem to know when not to do ellipses any further, and I daresay that the Associated Press overdid it in this case and obfuscated the meaning of the sentence as a result. Indeed, it’s no longer clear in that sentence what actor is “moving closer to banning its broadcasts,” making this clause virtually a dangling modifier to readers not wise to the ways of ellipsis-prone journalists.

MORE ON ELLIPTICAL SENTENCES:
Elliptical sentences often read and sound better than regular sentences
Deconstructing and understanding those puzzling elliptical sentences

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Which is correct: “XX is different (than, from) YY?”

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (August 27, 2013):

This sentence I saw in an online US newspaper’s commentary puzzled me: “I chose this dress because it’s different than the traditional wedding gown you see at every wedding.” It presumably might perplex anyone whose knowledge about the word “than” is that it is a conjunction used after a comparative adjective or adverb to introduce the second element or clause of an unequal comparison, as in “Maria is taller than her sister,” “He paints more beautifully than his friend,” and “Their neighborhood is more dangerous to walk at nights than ours.”

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

I’ve grown so accustomed to using “different from” instead of “different than” in this sentence that you presented, “I chose this dress because it’s (different from, different than) the traditional wedding gown you see at every wedding,” that I don’t think I’ll ever have reason to gravitate to using “different than” no matter what the grammatical situation might be. Having said that, however, I must acknowledge for the record here that this is simply a personal choice—my personal idiom, so to speak. Most grammar authorities in both American English and British English maintain that there’s nothing wrong with using “different than”—and even “different to”—in such sentence constructions. Indeed, alongside “different from,” both “different than” and “different to” have been used by well-known writers since the 17th century to convey the same sense.

Check out the exhaustive, very robust disquisition on these alternative usages by Stan Carey, a scientist turned writer-editor and swivel-chair linguist, in his blog “Sentence first.” I’ll take his as the last word on the subject.

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I find it easier to speak fluently in English than to write well in English. Why?

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (August 23, 2013):

In your appraisal (“Too much focus on grammar indeed can hamper learning how to speak in English”), why do you think it is relatively easier to become a fluent English speaker than a perfect writer in English language? That at least is the experience I am myself getting in my quest for perfect English. I always don't have any difficulty making conversations with my lecturers coming from English-speaking countries in our daily communications, and they even are surprised at how 'good' my English is in comparison to that of others. But troubles begin when I am asked to whip up even a small official letter or write just a brief account about my education life. I will spend a very long time wrestling with my mind over the correctness of a word, the proper preposition to apply, whether or not to use an adjective or adverb, or how long the sentences should be. A sentence that I usually make in a matter of seconds during conversation takes me almost 15  minutes to put it down on a piece of paper. 

And that appears to be not a problem restricted to nonnative speakers only: I spend a few minutes every day visiting various global Internet fora run in English, and I shouldn't at all sound ostentatious if I boast myself of having remarkable English-writing skills compared to many contributors there. In straightforward terms, most native speakers whose sentences I come across surely need not ignore signing up for a grammar school to learn how to write well in the language they might be speaking terribly fantastically.

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

You are hardly alone in your experience of finding it easier to speak fluently in English than to write well in English. The experience is actually universal, and we can be sure that it’s true not only to learners of English but of most—if not all—languages as well. This happens because of the vast but not well-appreciated difference between spoken language and written language, and in answer to your question above, I’ll explain the reason for that difference as simply as I can but hopefully without being too simplistic about it. 

When we speak, we simply repeat familiar phonetic sounds to convey ideas that have been clearly imprinted in our minds over time by just listening to those who speak the language, in much the same way that young birds learn bird language from the sounds made by their parents and the rest of the flock. The communication medium for speaking is the sound itself and our message gets instantly validated by our own ears and also by listeners other than ourselves, if any. The communication loop is therefore short and joined almost instantaneously.

In contrast, when we write, communication becomes a much slower, highly abstract, and complicated process. We need to harness the many tools of written language—vocabulary, spelling, sentence construction, punctuation, grammar, structure, paragraphing, orthography, typography—and map them on a physical surface (paper, board, or computer screen) to make sense and to clearly convey our ideas not only to ourselves but more so to the unseen or unknown reader. I’d say that just to learn to write passably well in a particular language is a no mean feat, but that to write so well as to become a great writer in English like William Shakespeare—a native English speaker—or Joseph Conrad—a nonnative English speaker from Poland—is nothing less than a stupendous achievement.

So I’d say that there’s no reason for you to fret that it’s not a breeze making yourself as fluent in your written English as in your spoken English. Mastery of written English is a long and continuing process, but from your postings, I can see that your written English is already way above par. I have no doubt that through sustained reading of excellent books in English and more practice in writing in English, you’ll eventually become as fluent or more fluent in your written English as you are now in you spoken English. Then perhaps—who knows?—you’ll begin to see your byline in leading English-language periodicals or in your own nonfiction books or novels, in much the same way that Michael Crichton did after getting his medical degree from Harvard.

Wouldn’t that be great?

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Overfocus on grammar hampers learning to speak English fluently

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (August 20, 2013):

I saw this piece of advice being given somewhere and I want to be sure if it is at all credible: People keen to improve their speaking skills shouldn’t put much focus on learning the basics of grammar. They just ought to spend much of their time talking with those believed to have a good command of English. Becoming proficient in grammar has an effect of making ourselves excessively careful about always coming up with grammatically unassailable sentences, which in turn will tend to slow down our talking speed and raise our level of self-consciousness.

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

Yes, that advice makes a lot of sense. Too much focus on grammar indeed can hamper learning how to speak in English—and I’d say in learning how to speak any language for that matter. It just makes the learner too self-conscious and too fearful of making mistakes to the point of being tongue-tied and inarticulate. Let’s keep in mind that even in the absence of formal grammar lessons, the child learns to speak and become adequately fluent in a particular language simply by listening to members of the household communicate with it. The child learns to speak a language primarily by imitating its speakers, and the more fluent the people around the child are in that language, the faster the learning process and the better will be the child’s command of it. This obviously applies to English as it does to all languages.

When it comes to writing, however, the situation becomes different: the learner should first learn enough of the vocabulary, grammar, semantics, and structure of the language to be able to put his ideas in clear, understandable writing. As we know, this is a much longer and more painstaking process than learning to speak the language, so it’s no wonder that we sometimes meet professionals who speak English very fluently but whose English grammar is so atrociously faulty that they couldn’t even write a decent sentence longer than five or six words. It is for this reason that every nonnative English speaker, whether young or adult, needs to undertake a continuing self-improvement program in English grammar and usage to be able to speak and write it fluently. Not to do so is to risk making do with faulty spoken and written English for life.

Rejoinder by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (August 23, 2013):

In your appraisal (“Too much focus on grammar indeed can hamper learning how to speak in English”), why do you think it is relatively easier to become a fluent English speaker than a perfect writer in English language? That at least is the experience I am myself getting in my quest for perfect English. I don’t have any difficulty making conversations with the lecturers in my classes who come from English-speaking countries; they even are surprised at how “good” my English is in comparison to that of others. However, trouble begins when I am asked to whip up even a short official letter or write just a brief account about my education life. I would spend all of three hours wrestling in my mind the correctness of a word, the proper preposition to apply, whether or not to use an adjective or adverb, or how long or short the sentences should be. A sentence that I usually make in a matter of seconds during conversation takes me almost 15 minutes to put down on paper. And that problem appears to be not restricted to nonnative speakers only. I spend a few minutes every day visiting various global Internet English-language forums, and I shouldn’t at all sound ostentatious if I say that I have far better English-writing skills than many contributors there. Very often, I would come across badly written sentences by native English speakers who, even if capable of speaking English fantastically well, surely should consider signing up in grammar school to straighten their basic English grammar and usage.

My reply to Mwita Chacha’s rejoinder:

You are hardly alone in your experience of finding it easier to speak fluently in English than to write well in English. The experience is actually universal, and we can be sure that it’s true not only to learners of English but of most—if not all—languages as well. This happens because of the vast but not well-appreciated difference between spoken language and written language, and in answer to your question above, I’ll explain the reason for that difference as simply as I can but hopefully without being too simplistic about it. 

When we speak, we simply repeat familiar phonetic sounds to convey ideas that, over time, have been clearly imprinted in our minds by just listening to those who speak the language, in much the same way that young birds learn bird language from the sounds made by their parents and the rest of the flock. The communication medium for speaking is the sound itself and our message gets instantly validated by our own ears and also by listeners other than ourselves, if any. The communication loop is therefore short and joined almost instantaneously.

In contrast, when we write, communication becomes a much slower, highly abstract, and complicated process. We need to harness the many tools of written language—vocabulary, spelling, sentence construction, punctuation, grammar, structure, paragraphing, orthography, typography—and map them on a physical surface (paper, board, or computer screen) to make sense and to clearly convey our ideas not only to ourselves but more so to the unseen or unknown reader. I’d say that just to learn to write passably well in a particular language is a no mean feat, but that to write so well as to become a great writer in English like William Shakespeare—a native English speaker—or Joseph Conrad—a nonnative English speaker from Poland—is nothing less than a stupendous achievement.

So I’d say that there’s no reason for you to fret that it’s not a breeze making yourself as fluent in your written English as in your spoken English. Mastery of written English is a long and continuing process, but from your postings, I can see that your written English is already way above par. I have no doubt that through sustained reading of excellent books in English and more practice in writing in English, you’ll eventually become as fluent or more fluent in your written English as you are now in you spoken English. Then perhaps—who knows?—you’ll begin to see your byline in leading English-language periodicals or in your own nonfiction books or novels, in much the same way that Michael Crichton did after getting his medical degree from Harvard.

Wouldn’t that be great?

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How long should our sentences be to clearly convey our ideas?

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (August 20, 2013):

Different writers writing about writing well in English have different perspectives over how long sentences should be constructed to effectively deliver the ideas carried by them. Some advocate short sentences, arguing that long ones just tend to confuse and put off readers. Others recommend making sentences as lengthy as they might require to accommodate the information to be delivered. They go as far as to say that short sentences are more preferable for making headlines of stories. Still, there are those who campaign for a combination of both, pointing out that this could prevent the monotony that might arise if sentences are of the same length all throughout in the exposition. Your stating your position on this will definitely put an end to my lingering confusion.

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

To clearly convey an idea in the writer’s mind, a sentence should only be as long as it needs to be. It could be as short as two or three words, as “That’s all” in the old Nat King Cole song or “Call me Ishmael” in the opening line of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. On the other hand, the sentence could be all of 4,391 words, which is how long Molly Bloom’s soliloquy is in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses; this formidable wordage, however, pales in comparison with a 13,955-word sentence in British novelist Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club, which Wikipedia says “appears to hold the record for the Longest English sentence in English literature.” (This time I won’t bother you with a link to a quote.)

My point in citing these highly disparate sentence lengths in published English work is that there really isn’t any rule as to how long a sentence should be. It all depends on how simple or complex the mind of the writer runs, on the personal writing style that he or she has developed, and on the kind of audience being addressed. For practical purposes as opposed to literary purposes, however, I would recommend brevity in sentence construction all the time in the interest of clarity. In particular, I do think that a newspaper reporter would be making a hateful imposition on the reader by habitually writing news-story sentences far in excess of, say, 20-25 words; that a TV news writer would cause confusion and consternation among both news readers and TV audiences by foisting 30-word sentences on them even just occasionally; and that a speaker on the lecture circuit would make audiences doze off without fail by droning on and on with sentences way beyond 30-40 words. 

Admittedly, though, the preceding 85-word sentence above would seem to contradict my very own prescriptions for sentence length. Well, it does, but I suggest that we look at this contradiction as another important aspect of sentence word-counts. Punctuation does change the sentence-length paradigm altogether. Indeed, the judicious use of punctuation marks—the comma, semicolon, colon, dash, ellipsis, and parenthesis—makes it possible for us to write high word-count, many-idea sentences without overwhelming our readers or listeners. This, however, is another aspect of sentence construction that we should look at more closely some other time.

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Analyzing a tough test sentence that uses the function word “but”

Question e-mailed by FH from Iran (July 29, 2013):

I overlooked this question e-mailed to me last month by FH, an Iran-based English teacher:

Which choice is correct? Please explain your reasons.

“We can do nothing for Peter but ________ Peter to think deeply about his problem.”
(a) to ask
(b) asking
(c) ask

My reply to FH:

My apologies for this belated reply.

There are two possible ways of parsing this sentence with respect to the function word “but”: “We can do nothing for Peter but ________ Peter to think deeply about his problem.” One is to look at “but” as a conjunction in the sense of “with the exception of,” and the other is to look at “but” as a preposition in the sense of “other than.”

Let’s first test “but” as a conjunction by substituting “with the exception of” for it in the sentence you presented: “We can do nothing for Peter with the exception of ________ Peter to think deeply about his problem.” The gerund “asking” works perfectly both grammatically and semantically in that construction: “We can do nothing for Peter with the exception of asking Peter to think deeply about his problem.” However, the construction becomes dysfunctional when we use “but” itself as the conjunction: “We can do nothing for Peter but asking Peter to think deeply about his problem.” This indicates that while the usage of “but” as a conjunction in that sentence is conceivable, it’s not syntactically advisable.

Now let’s test “but” as a preposition by substituting “other than” for it in the same sentence you presented: “We can do nothing for Peter other than ________ Peter to think deeply about his problem.” The infinitive phrase “to ask” works perfectly both grammatically and semantically in that construction: “We can do nothing for Peter other than to ask Peter to think deeply about his problem.” The construction remains grammatically and semantically correct when we use “but” itself as the preposition: “We can do nothing for Peter but to ask Peter to think deeply about his problem.”

This means that using “but” as a preposition is the syntactically correct choice for that sentence. And let me hasten to add that with “but” as a preposition in that sentence, the infinitive phrase “to ask Peter to think deeply about his problem”—a noun form—functions as the object of the preposition.

By now, it should be unmistakably clear that in all respects, the correct answer choice for the test sentence you presented is “(a) to ask.”

But one more question remains: What about “(c) ask”? Is there anything conceivably wrong with this sentence construction: “We can do nothing for Peter but ask Peter to think deeply about his problem”? This form is actually an elliptical form of the sentence “We can do nothing for Peter but to ask Peter to think deeply about his problem,” with the preposition “to” in the infinitive “to think” dropped for brevity and ease of articulation—the so-called “bare infinitive.” Many professional writers routinely use this elliptical form—I would even say they do so instinctively—for informal narratives and dialogue because it sounds more natural and spontaneous.

This being the case, I must conclude that the test sentence you presented is not very suitable for standard testing purposes because apart from being too complex, it is fraught with grammatical and syntactic ambiguity in actual usage.

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The use of the verb form “have to” to express an objective obligation

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (July 10, 1013):

A BBC correspondent in South Sudan made this statement in a documentary highlighting the progress that has been achieved in the two-year-old African nation since its independence: “In a recent past, patients have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services. But now that...”

I found her combination of “have” and “had” not only awkward but also strange. The only such combination I am used to can be represented by the sentence “I have had an accident,” a present perfect construction that uses “have” as a helping verb and “had” as an action verb.

Do you approve of the grammar of that correspondent’s sentence?

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

The sentence “In a recent past, patients have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services” uses “have to” in its past participle form “had to” to express an objective obligation or an obligation imposed by an outside agent or force. In this sentence, the first “have” functions as the auxiliary verb and the second “have” is actually the main verb or the verb that takes the tense. That particular sentence has the following basic form: 

“Patients  +  have  +  had to  +  walk.”

Subject  +  “have” or “has” (as auxiliary verb)  +  “had to” (where “have” is the main verb in the past participle form “had”)  +  bare infinitive

Such sentences are perfectly grammatical constructions where the subject is forced or constrained to act not on its own accord but by a separate, external power. 

Now let’s consider the particular sentence you presented (I took the liberty of replacing the article “a” with the more proper “the” to make the sentence unassailable by grammar purists): 

“In the recent past, patients have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”

Here, the intended sense is that until recently, the patients had no other means to get medical services but to walk for very long distances, presumably because there has been no other means of transport.

Now let’s take a look at the various forms that sentence will take when the subject is in the singular or plural form, whether in the first person, second person, or third person:

“In the recent past, I have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“In the recent past, you have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“In the recent past, he/she/John/Marcia has had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“In the recent past, we have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“In the recent past, they have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”

The strangeness or awkwardness you feel over such “have to” sentences may have to do with that BBC correspondent’s use of the time marker “in the recent past,” which in a very strict sense could be construed as more indicative of the past tense rather than the present perfect. But see how that strangeness or awkwardness diminishes and ultimately disappears when we tweak that time marker to the more precise and more obvious present-perfect forms “until recently” and “until this morning when this rural hospital opened”:

“Until recently, I have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“Until recently, you have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“Until recently, he/she/John/Marcia has had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“Until recently, we have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“Until recently, they have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”

“Until this morning this morning when this rural hospital opened, I have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“Until this morning this morning when this rural hospital opened, you have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“Until this morning this morning when this rural hospital opened, he/she/John/Marcia has had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“Until this morning this morning when this rural hospital opened, we have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.”
“Until this morning this morning when this rural hospital opened, they have had to walk for very long distances to seek medical services.” 

I trust that these various conjugations and usage variations of the “have had to + bare infinitive” form will increase your level of comfort in accepting and using it.

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What’s the difference between the preposition “on” and “in”?

Question by Al Bagtas, Forum member (July 7, 2013):

Sir, if “on” may be used “on the bus” or “on the plane.” How about with the submarine? Can it be “on the submarine”? Heard that it should be “in the submarine.” Please help.

My reply to Al Bagtas:

For indicating location, the general rule in American English is to use the preposition “in” for being in an enclosed or circumscribed space, “on” for being on a surface, and “at” for being at a point in space.

“In” is idiomatically used in these cases: “The children are [in the kitchen, in the garden, in the car, in the library, in the class, in school]. This is in the context of “kitchen,” “garden,” “car,” “library, “class,” and “school” as enclosed or circumscribed—but not virtually closed or insulated—space.

On the other hand, it’s idiomatic for native American English speakers to use “on” for being in these particular means of transport: “They are [on the plane, on the train, on the boat, on the submarine].” This explains the usage of “on” in this sentence regarding work on a submarine: “One of the typical duties of a Seaman Subfarer is working with non-nuclear divisions on the submarine.”

However, for indicating an action, activity, or process that happens inside fully closed vessels, “in” is the idiomatic usage, as in this sentence: “Previously there were fears that women were more at risk from a build-up of carbon dioxide in the submarine.” It’s in this same context that “in” is used in this sentence: “The vinegar was fermented in big batching tanks.”

In contrast, to indicate being located at a particular point in space, the preposition “at” is idiomatically used: “She was [at home, at the library, at the office, at school, at work] when we arrived.” The context is that these locations are not reckoned as places but as simply a point—a small dot of sorts—in space.

We must keep in mind that these indicative preposition usages are essentially conventional, even quirkish at times. They have no inherent or discernible logic of their own but have simply established themselves over time as the preferred usage by native English speakers. 

FURTHER READING:   
Lesson #8 – Specific Rules for Preposition Usage

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In formal letters, should we capitalize all job titles?

Question by Mwita Chacha, Forum member (July 4, 2013):

I’d like to know what grammar rules are saying about capitalizing job titles.

I the other day had a “fierce” argument with my Australian professor, who apparently felt demeaned that I wrote her title as “dean of faculty” rather than as “Dean of Faculty” in one line of my letter asking for permission to attend the wedding ceremony of a relative in a distant town. She refused to approve the letter unless I modified the phrase. But confident I hadn’t committed any grammar mistake, I wasn’t comfortable about making the change she wanted, challenging her to show me one grammar rule demanding that all job titles be capitalized. Reddening and shaking with rage, she crumpled the letter in her hand and tossed it in a dustbin, forcing me out of her office while shouting “I am not available to disputant students.”

Do we really have to capitalize every job title in sight as the professor suggested?

My reply to Mwita Chacha:

There are no hard-and-fast grammar rules for capitalizing the first letters of job titles, but in formal written communication, the astute communicator does it as a matter of elementary courtesy. In a well-established social or academic hierarchy, not to observe this formality will understandably be taken as a sign of disrespect—even spite or contempt—for the holder of the position being addressed. I am therefore not surprised at all that your Australian professor didn’t take so kindly to your addressing her in your letter simply as “dean of faculty” instead of “Dean of Faculty.” In a very real sense, you demeaned her, so her outrage towards you, while probably excessive and unbecoming of her, wasn’t at all surprising.

We need to make a clear distinction between the position as a term and the formal job title for it. From a purely grammar standpoint in an exposition or narrative, we can routinely use lower-case characters for the first letters of the position being held by a particular person, as in “Joanna Smith is the dean of faculty of X University.” But when referring to her in her formal capacity, protocol and elementary courtesy demand that she be formally addressed as follows (assuming she has a doctorate, of course): “Dr. Joanna Smith, PhD, Dean of Faculty, X University.” All the more so is capitalization of the first letters of the title required when it is used ahead of the name: “Dean of Faculty Joanna Smith.” By doing this, the writer will definitely be much more welcome and agreeable to the recipient of the message, who then can be expected to be more receptive to what the writer has in mind and what the writer wants to happen or to be done.

But let’s now take up your next question: Do we really have to capitalize every job title in sight as your professor suggested? I don’t think so, but to get the results we want from the people we are formally writing to, we need to be sensitive to their temperament and emotional needs; if they are known to have big egos, we should capitalize their job title as a matter of course. To quibble about the grammatical correctness of doing so would really be counterproductive and—as you’ve found in your case—thoroughly disastrous. The lesson to be learned here is that in formal communication, whether written or spoken, etiquette and precedence—the formal term for this is “protocol”—should trump grammar correctness at all times.

For your better appreciation of the need to observe the social graces, I am posting below an essay that I wrote for my “English Plain and Simple” column in The Manila Times way back in 2004:

As a cautionary note about capitalization, though, I must hasten to add the two paragraphs below from “A Style Guide for Writing in English,” a later essay that I wrote in my English-usage column in The Manila Times:

I hope that this puts everything in the proper perspective for you.

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