USE AND MISUSE

The more/most idiomatic ways of saying that one has a cold

Question from Sky, Forum member (April 7, 2012):

Which of the statements below is correct or more/most idiomatic?

1. “I caught a cold.”
2. “I caught cold.”
3. “I caught colds.”
4. “I got a cold.”
5. “I got colds.” 

Thanks.

My reply to Sky:

I would think that Sentences 1 and 4 are the more idiomatic usage among the five you listed. Read them aloud to check for yourself:

1. “I caught a cold.”
4. “I got a cold.”

Sentences 2, 3, and 5 can be fixed and made to sound idiomatic by adding the article “the” before the noun “cold” or “colds,” as follows:

2. “I caught the cold.”
3. “I caught the colds.”
5. “I got the colds.”

Of course, these four colloquial expressions of the same idea are also commonly used:

6. “I have a cold.”
7. “I’ve got a cold.”
8. “I’m down with the cold.”
9. “I went down with the cold.”

All of the nine sentence constructions listed above are grammatically airtight and may be used depending on the particular situation of the speaker and the severity of the affliction.

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Using the conjunction “whenever” and the sequence of tenses

Question by Miss Mae, Forum member (April 1, 2012):

If I use “whenever” in the sentence “But through the Nile, cities and civilizations sprang whenever the river overflows and scatter fertile soil onto its banks,” wouldn’t it seem that cities and civilizations still arise in Egypt today since the river still runs off every high tide?

My reply to Miss Mae:

Yes, that sentence would seem to mean that cities and civilizations still arise in Egypt today every time the river run offs at high tide—a state of affairs that couldn’t be possibly true. The semantic problem in that sentence is due to the wrong use of the temporal subordinating conjunction “whenever” as well as the wrong use of the simple past-tense “sprang” in the main clause and of the present-tense “overflows and scatters” in the subordinate clause.

For that complex sentence to yield the correct sense, the sequence of tenses in the two clauses should be corrected as follows:

“But through the Nile, cities and civilizations had sprung in places where the river would overflow and scatter fertile soil onto its banks.”

“Had sprung” is, of course, used here to indicate certain events in the indefinite past, and “would overflow and scatter” is used to indicate that the two indicated actions repeatedly (seasonally) happened in the past.

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When to use “there is” or “there are”

Question from Miss Mae, Forum member (March 25, 2012):

I’m getting confused with how “there is” and “there are” should be used. What really should be the rule?

“There is plenty to enjoy in the cultural arena. There are countless attractions, too, trendy and vibrant.”

My reply to Miss Mae:

The two sentences you presented use the so-called anticipatory “there” as subject, where the notional subject is the noun phrase that follows the linking verb “is” or “are.” The anticipatory “there,” as you may recall, carries little or no independent meaning and simply points forward to the notional subject that’s positioned later in the sentence to give it end-weight or emphasis.

The rule for deciding whether the notional subject is singular (thus needing “is”) or plural (thus needing “are) is very simple: it’s singular when the head noun is singular in form or notionally singular, and it’s plural when the head noun is plural in form of notionally plural.

In the first sentence in question, “There is plenty to enjoy in the cultural arena,” the head noun of the noun phrase, “plenty,” is notionally singular, so the use of the singular form linking verb “is” is correct. In the second sentence, “There are countless attractions, too, trendy and vibrant,” the nominal noun of the noun phrase, “attractions,” is plural, so the use of the plural form linking verb “are” is correct.   

RELATED READING:
The wisdom of routinely avoiding anticipatory “there is/are” clauses

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Problem in relating the pronoun “they” to its antecedent nouns

Question from Miss Mae, Forum member (March 23, 2012):

How about this sentence?

“From children to music lovers to antique collectors, they can have a drink in the outdoor cafés here, dine in one of the restaurants, or shop in the covered shopping centres.”

Is it right that “they” is used to refer to the “children,” “music lovers,” and “antique collectors”?

My reply to Miss Mae:

The syntax of this sentence is defective and confusing:

“From children to music lovers to antique collectors, they can have a drink in the outdoor cafés here, dine in one of the restaurants, or shop in the covered shopping centres.”

The pronoun “they” is improperly positioned in a way that it can’t be a collective pronoun for the three antecedent subjects in the prepositional phrase upfront of the sentence. The result: that prepositional dangles and is unable to latch on to the subject “they” of the main clause.

Here’s a reconstruction of that sentence that solves the problem:

“Children, music lovers, and antique collectors can have a drink in the outdoor cafés here, dine in one of the restaurants, or shop in the covered shopping centres.”

Still, even in that corrected sentence, there’s something iffy about the listing and the order of the kinds of customers of the commercial establishments. What’s the logic of the primacy of children in that list? Why are they being listed in the league of music lovers and antique collectors? Can’t children be music lovers and antique collectors, too? Can children go to those establishments alone, without adult companions?

This is why from the available information in that sentence, it would make more sense to reconstruct it this way to address those concerns:

“Music lovers and and antique collectors can bring along their children and have a drink in the outdoor cafés here, dine in one of the restaurants, or shop in the covered shopping centres.”

Sentences must not only be grammatically correct but plausible and logically airtight as well.

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The distinction between the usage of “further” and “farther”

Question from jonathanfvaldez, Forum member (March 21, 2012):

My web research (see following excerpt) shows that the use of “further” instead of “farther” in the phrase “Nothing could be farther from the truth” is acceptable.  What is your preference?

“If we speak of a statement that is far from the truth, for example, we should also allow the use of farther in a sentence such as Nothing could be farther from the truth. But Nothing could be further from the truth is so well established as to seem a fixed expression.”
(“farther,” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., 2000)”

My reply to jonathanfvaldez:

Hands down, my personal preference is “farther” rather than “further” in the sentence “Nothing could be farther from the truth.” But in the sense of such statements as “Don't speak any further,” I'll go for “further” instead of “farther” anytime.

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The choice between “these” and “that”

Question from Miss Mae, Forum member (March 19, 2012):

I finally made up my mind. I’d use “these” in this sentence: 

“Clean, accessible, and diverse—the coast of Zuid Holland is just like these.”

But did I make the right choice? “That” also sounds right...

My reply to Miss Mae:

This sentence of yours is grammatically incorrect: 

“Clean, accessible, and diverse—the coast of Zuid Holland is just like these.”

You can't use the pointing pronoun “these” or “those” to refer to adjectives, only to nouns, pronouns, and other noun forms. To refer or point to adjectives as a collective antecedent in such sentences, use “that” as follows:

“Clean, accessible, and diverse—the coast of Zuid Holland is just like that.”

That sentence of yours can use “these” only as a qualifier of an attribute noun describing the antecedent list of adjectives, as follows:

“Clean, accessible, and diverse—the coast of Zuid Holland has these attributes.”

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Is this correct: “All agents continue to be assisting customers”?

Question by na2rboy, new Forum member (March 10, 2012):

Hi, everyone! At work, I have people telling me that this sentence is correct:

“All available agents continue to be assisting other customers.”

Is it correct? If not, what rule is it breaking? 

In my head, it feels wrong. Maybe because I am desperate to make it “All available agents are still assisting other customers.”

Thanks!

My reply to na2rboy:

No, I don’t think this sentence you presented is structurally and syntactically correct:

“All available agents continue to be assisting other customers.”

It’s one of those iffy, officious, and convoluted statements that get established in the workplace despite being grammatically faulty.

For one, the verb phrase “continue to be assisting other customers” uses the verb “continue” in a very awkward way. In this construction, the phrase “to be assisting other customers” is actually an infinitive phrase—a noun form—functioning as the direct object of the verb “continue.” However, in such constructions, the verb “continue” happens to have a grammar peculiarity: it’s one of those verbs that require the verb embedded in the infinitive phrase to drop the “to” and become what’s called a “bare infinitive.” Below are some examples of how this bare-infinitive transformation works for infinitive phrases that serve as direct object of the verb “continue”:

“continue to be working beyond midnight” becomes “continue working beyond midnight”
“continue to be seeing ghosts” becomes “continue seeing ghosts”
“continue to be teaching algebra” becomes “continue teaching algebra”

When we apply this bare-infinitive transformation to “All available agents continue to be assisting other customers,” the sentence gets streamlined as follows:

“All available agents continue assisting other customers.”

Even in this corrected construction, however, the sentence remains semantically questionable. It’s a fuzzy statement because the verb “continue” doesn’t yield a logical, real-life sense. Indeed, what does it mean when “All available agents continue assisting other customers”? By using the verb “continue,” the statement evokes a wrong sense of a permanent state instead of just a temporary one. Indeed, “continue” is actually a wrong choice of verb in describing the situation at hand. The correct sense will emerge when that verb is replaced by either “are busy” or “are” in these grammatically airtight alternative constructions:

“All available agents are busy assisting other customers.”
“All available agents are assisting other customers at the moment.”

Although the first statement above is grammatically and semantically perfect, I’m leery of its use of the word “busy,” which I think can rub the listener the wrong way. To my mind, the more palatable statement from a customer relations standpoint is the second sentence. Try saying it aloud to check if my perception is right:

“All available agents are assisting other customers at the moment.”

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Using the anticipatory “there”

Question by Stella, new Forum member (March 11, 2012):

Is the sentence constructions below possible this sentence?

“There is a cat there.”
“There it is the MP3,” in the sense of “The MP3 is there.”

Thanks a lot.

My reply to Stella:

Yes, the two sentences below that you presented are grammatically possible:

(1) “There is a cat there.”
(2) “There it is the MP3,” in the sense of “The MP3 is there.”

Sentence 1 actually uses two senses of “there”—the first the so-called anticipatory “there,” and the second, the pointing “there.” Be definition, the anticipatory “there” is pronoun that carries little or no independent meaning but simply points forward to the notional subject that’s placed later in the sentence for reasons of end weight or emphasis. In the sentence “There is a cat there,” the notional subject of the anticipatory “there” is the noun “cat.” On the other hand, the second “there” in that sentence is the pointing “there”—an adjective used for directional emphasis.

Although grammatically possible, Sentence 2 is actually a run-on sentence that strict grammarians are likely to sneer at. To make it grammatically aboveboard, it needs to be punctuated in any of the following ways:

“There it is, the MP3.”
“There it is: the MP3,”
“There it is—the MP3.”

All three punctuations work but the third—the double dash—is preferable stylistically because it delivers just the right sense of pause needed by the statement.

RELATED READING:
The wisdom of routinely avoiding anticipatory “there is/are” clauses

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Problem in subject-verb agreement

Question from Miss Mae, Forum member (March 7, 2012):

Is the construction below correct, Sir?

“Zuid Holland is the ‘little region’ that the Dutch, Surinamese, Turkish, Moroccan, and Aruban behold.”

A collective noun calls for a singular verb (especially if those involved n the unit are in unison). But the nouns it is referring to are more than one. How should I go about this then?

My reply to Miss Mae:

Yes, the construction of this sentence that you presented is correct:

“Zuid Holland is the ‘little region’ that the Dutch, Surinamese, Turkish, Moroccan, and Aruban behold.”

The construction above is actually a complex sentence, with “Zuid Holland is the ‘little region’” as the main clause and the relative clause “that the Dutch, Surinamese, Turkish, Moroccan, and Aruban behold” as the subordinate or dependent clause. It’s true, as you pointed out, that “little region” is a collective noun, but it really has no syntactical relation to the plural-form verb “behold” in the subordinate clause. That verb is operative only in the subordinate clause, and it is in the present-tense plural form because the doer of its action isn’t “Zuid Holland” or “little region” but the group of plural nouns “Dutch, Surinamese, Turkish, Moroccan, and Aruban.” There is therefore no subject-verb disagreement in that sentence at all.

Two alternative constructions of that sentence are these:

(1)  “Zuid Holland is the ‘little region’ that is beheld by the Dutch, Surinamese, Turkish, Moroccan, and Aruban.” 
(2) “Zuid Holland is the ‘little region’ beheld by the Dutch, Surinamese, Turkish, Moroccan, and Aruban behold.”

In these two constructions, no question about subject-verb agreement arises because the verb “beheld” is in the past participle form, unlike in the original sentence construction where a possible subject-verb disagreement might be perceived—wrongly, of course—because “behold” is in the present-tense.
  
By the way, for those who are not very knowledgeable in world geography, Zuid Holland is South Holland (“zuid” is the Dutch word for “south”), a province situated on the North Sea in the western part of the Netherlands. Its provincial capital is The Hague and it is one of the most densely populated and industrialized areas in the world.

Rejoinder by Miss Mae (March 10, 2012):

Uh, oh. I thought wrongly!

Because the reason why I got confused with this construction is the presence of the five collective nouns (“the Dutch, Surinamese, Turkish, Moroccan, and Aruban behold”).

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The proper way to construct elliptical sentences

Question e-mailed by Fern S. (January 25, 2012):

Dear Mr. Carillo,

I wrote a draft memorandum to our personnel department. The last sentence of the memorandum read as follows:

“Also, please be informed that we are willing to consider regular employees, who are licensed Mechanical Engineers and are interested to transfer to our department.”

Our assistant manager edited the foregoing sentence by deleting the word “are” after “and.” The edited sentence reads as follows:

“Also, please be informed that we are willing to consider regular employees, who are licensed Mechanical Engineers and interested to transfer to our department.”

Was the correction correct?

Thank you.

Fern 

My reply to Fern:

Yes, I think your assistant manager’s correction of that sentence in your draft memo is well-advised. By deleting the word “are” after “and” from your original sentence construction, your assistant manager has come up with this more streamlined and better-sounding elliptical sentence:

“Also, please be informed that we are willing to consider regular employees, who are licensed Mechanical Engineers and interested to transfer to our department.”

Recall that an elliptical construction is a sentence that omits from a clause one or more words that would otherwise be required by the remaining elements. This is done to streamline a sentence and make it more concise and easier to articulate. For instance, the sentence “The youngest staff in the office is as competent as the eldest” is an elliptical form of this fully spelled-out sentence: “The youngest staff in the office is as competent as the eldest staff in the office.” Note that the second mention of the words “staff in the office” has been dropped to streamline the sentence and make it more concise.

Let’s take a closer look at your original sentence construction:

“Also, please be informed that we are willing to consider regular employees, who are licensed Mechanical Engineers and are interested to transfer to our department.”

The above sentence construction of yours is actually also an elliptical or streamlined version of the following fully spelled-out sentence that has two relative clauses:

“Also, please be informed that we are willing to consider regular employees, who are licensed Mechanical Engineers and who are interested to transfer to our department.”

When you streamlined the above sentence, however, you only dropped the “who” of the second relative clause to come up with this elliptical version:

“Also, please be informed that we are willing to consider regular employees, who are licensed Mechanical Engineers and are interested to transfer to our department.”  

While there’s nothing grammatically wrong with the streamlined sentence above, I would say that your effort to make it elliptical wasn’t done completely because you only dropped the relative pronoun “who” and retained the second linking verb “are.” The norm when making such sentences elliptical is to drop both the relative pronoun “who” and the verb that follows it. By dropping the second linking verb “are” as well, your assistant manager did right in completing that “ellipticalization” process as follows:

“Also, please be informed that we are willing to consider regular employees, who are licensed Mechanical Engineers and interested to transfer to our department.”

Even so, I think the English of the above elliptical sentence as well as that of your original sentence construction isn’t grammatically airtight. It actually needs to drop the comma before the relative clause “who are licensed Mechanical Engineers and interested to transfer to our department.” This is because that relative clause is actually restrictive in nature and as such, that comma before it is grammatically unnecessary. Removing that comma would convert that relative clause into the correct restrictive form, as follows:

“Also, please be informed that we are willing to consider regular employees who are licensed Mechanical Engineers and interested to transfer to our department.” 

You will recall that in English grammar, a restrictive relative clause is one that’s essential to the definiteness of the word it modifies, as in “The man who was caught speeding is a high government official.” In contrast, a nonrestrictive relative clause is one that’s not essential to the definiteness of the meaning of the word it modifies, “My eldest daughter, who has a master’s degree, has decided not to pursue a PhD for the time being.” One distinctive difference between them is that a restrictive relative clause can’t be dropped from the sentence because doing so seriously changes the meaning of that sentence, while a nonrestrictive relative clause is actually optional to that sentence and can be dropped at will. Another difference is that a restrictive relative clause shouldn't be set off by commas, while a nonrestrictive relative clause needs to be set off from the main clause by a comma or a pair of commas depending on its position in the sentence. 

RELATED POSTINGS ON ELLIPTICAL SENTENCES: 
“Deconstructing and understanding those puzzling elliptical sentences,” August 28, 2011
“Elliptical sentences often read and sound better than regular sentences,” June 18, 2010

RELATED POSTINGS ON RELATIVE CLAUSES:
“Guideposts for using ‘who,’ ‘that,’ and ‘which’ to link relative clauses,” April 2, 2011
“Why it’s tough choosing between ‘that’ and ‘which’ to link relative clauses,” April 9, 2011

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The proper way to construct a question in a news headline

Question e-mailed by Jhumur Dasgupta, December 26, 2011:

Hi,

I am a journalism student and I came across your posts on English usage. I am a regular visitor of your forum.

Recently, I came across this headline in a website: 

Why are there less women CEOs, asks the professor

This looks a bit odd to me. I feel it should be 

Why are there less women CEOs? asks the professor 

or 

Why there are less women CEOs? asks the professor 

Can you please suggest a better way to handle such headlines?

Thanks,

Jhumur D

My reply to Jhumur:

This headline from that website is indeed odd and, even worse, grammatically and syntactically wrong:

Why are there less women CEOs, asks the professor

Your first suggested alternative construction is grammatically and syntactically correct:

Why are there less women CEOs? asks the professor 

It properly deploys the question mark where it should be—right after the question without quotes and not after the attribution.

This second suggested construction of yours is grammatically flawed, however, for it puts a question mark after a question constructed as a declarative statement:

Why there are less women CEOs? asks the professor

For the above headline to be grammatically correct and more elegant sounding, the attribution should be positioned ahead of the declarative form of the question and the question mark dispensed with, as follows:

Professor asks why there are less women CEOs

To dramatize the question, of course, we can also restructure the above headline as follows:

Professor asks: Why are there less women CEOs?

Take your pick from the last two constructions above.

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How the sense of “until” differs from that of “when”

Feedback e-mailed by Kyriacos from Cyprus (December 26, 2011):

I have started reading your articles and I find them an excellent tool to smooth out the rough edges of my English. However, I would like to comment on your article in the link below, since I think you have misunderstood the doctor’s using the conjunction “until.” Your comment that the doctor used the conjunction “until” to mean “up to the time that,” is exactly what the doctor meant. My understanding is that the doctor tried to say that we should keep our guards up until the epidemic subsides. 

Please also correct my writing above to help me improve my English! 

“When media permits a grammatically flawed official statement to see print”

Regards,
Kyriacos

My reply to Kyriacos:

Thank you for the compliment about my essays that have been posted in the Forum.

In that essay you are referring to, the doctor was quoted by the news story as follows: “The best time to prevent bird flu is now. Until the cases are low, let us stay ahead of the epidemic.”

I commented that the conjunction “until” was misused in that statement to mean “up to the time that.” “Until,” which means “up to the time that” or “up to such time as,” denotes the duration of a specific action, as in “The conference continued until past noon,” or the completion of an action leading to or resulting in a certain condition, as in “The woman talked and talked until she lost her voice.” Note that in both these two senses of “until,” two active verbs—“continued” and “talked and talked”—are working in tandem with “until.” 

In the doctor’s statement, however, “until” is dysfunctional in “until the cases are low” because (1) this phrase is being used in the sense of the lowness of the bird flu cases as an unchanged prevailing condition, and (2) there’s only the linking verb “is” and no active verb at all in the phrase.” The conjunction that correctly denotes the sense intended by the doctor is “while,” meaning “during the time that” or “in the interim that,” as in “While the cases are low, let us stay ahead of the epidemic.” This means that the doctor is saying that to forestall a bird flu epidemic, foreign-aid organizations should take proactive action against it “while the cases are low,” not “until the cases are low.” 

This sense is, of course, different from the meaning that arose when the doctor used “until” instead in the phrase “until the cases are low”—a wrong sense that led to your understanding “that the doctor tried to say that we should keep our guards up until the epidemic subsides.”

As to your English, Kyriacos, I think you are doing very well with its grammar and usage. Notice that I have posted the text of your e-mail practically verbatim, except for the comma that I inserted after the phrase “comment on your article” in the second sentence of your note.

I also noticed that you aren’t registered as a Forum member yet. Why not register now so you can directly post your question and comments in the Forum’s discussion boards?

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Distinctions between euphemistic terms for people with disability

Feedback from Miss Mae, Forum member (December 20, 2011):

This could not be as important as the death toll in Northern Mindanao lately, but I would like to know the proper term to use:

A few days ago, a Filipino entertainment personality explained earnestly that the correct label for a certain sector in our society is “differently abled.” But Daniel S. Hamermesh, author of the book Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful, prefers to call this sector “looks-challenged” (“How society favors the beautiful in practically all aspects of life”). Are “differently abled” and “looks-challenged” better terms than “person with disability,” the term used in the law on disabled persons that was signed some two years ago?

My reply to Miss Mae:

The three terms you are asking about don’t refer to the same thing. The term “looks-challenged” used by Daniel S. Hamermesh, author of Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful, is a euphemism for “the ugly” or “the unbeautiful.” It doesn’t refer in any way to people with a physical disability or “the physically disabled,” the legal terminology for which is, as you pointed out, “person with disability.” On the other hand, the term “differently abled” used by that Filipino entertainment personality you cited is the politically correct 1990s euphemism for “the disabled.”

Says the online Urban Dictionary about the term “differently abled”: “Contrary to what the words may suggest, ‘differently abled’ does NOT mean ‘having different abilities;’ more precisely it means ‘lacking expected abilities.’ Since mental disability is generally associated with much more social stigma than physical disability (and hence is ripe for being described by a ‘sensitive’ PC vocabulary), ‘differently abled’ is most frequently encountered in similar contexts as ‘special.’ With this in mind, persons of non-retarded status should construe the phrase as a deep insult.”

This being the case, I think there’s really no basis for determining which of the three terms—“looks-challenged,” “person with disability, and “differently abled”—is better. They are just euphemisms used by polite society in place of their judgmental, often unpleasant-to-hear equivalents.

Rejoinder from Miss Mae (December 21, 2011):

But since the Magna Charta for Disabled Persons favored the term “persons with disabilities,” shouldn’t we stick to it?

My reply to Miss Mae:

Language can’t be legislated; it’s organic and just evolves. What’s acceptable usage today may become anathema next year or the years after.

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When could a writer start a sentence with a “but”?

Question from Miss Mae, Forum member (December 11, 2011):

Sir, when could a writer start a sentence with a “but”?

My reply to Miss Mae:

When can a writer start a sentence with the word “but”?

My answer is anytime “but” is appropriate, and so long as it’s not overused. You see, “but” is a very versatile word that can serve in any of five ways—as a conjunction, a preposition, an adverb, a pronoun, and even a noun.

For instance, you can start a short-story with a “but” functioning as a preposition in the sense of “except,” as in this example:

“But for a tiny little smudge in the hem, Cynthia’s dress was spotlessly clean. No one would have thought that it came from the jet of blood from her unfaithful lover’s temple after she shot him pointblank…”

A dialogue can also start with “but” if need be, as in the following example where it’s used in the sense of “isn’t it that”:

“But you told me you loved only me,” Fred’s girlfriend reprimanded him the other night. “So who’s this girl you were seen kissing at the park last Sunday?”

“Calm down, Karen,” he replied. “That girl was Nona, a first cousin of mine that I hadn’t seen for years.”

Those two usages of “but” are, of course, distinct from that in the following sentence where “but” serves as a conjunction in the sense of “notwithstanding”:

“We invited him but he declined our invitation.”

In this case, it’s obvious that the “but”-clause can’t be positioned up front.

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What does “has” have to do with the verb’s past tense?

Question by Miss Mae, Forum member (November 30, 2011):

I thought I already understood the concept.

But yesterday, I was confounded again that it took a friend to point out a grammatical mistake I had just committed.

What does “has” have to do with the past form of the verb “make”? I originally constructed the sentence below with “made” only:

“Being a quadriparetic has made me forget things, even those that are important.”

My reply to Miss Mae:

The following sentence of yours uses the verb “made” in the simple past tense:

“Being a quadriparetic* made me forget things, even those that are important.”

Here, the speaker’s use of the past tense indicates that his or her forgetfulness was a condition in the past that’s no longer subsisting.

On the other hand, the following sentence that uses the form “has made” is in the present perfect tense:

“Being a quadriparetic has made me forget things, even those that are important.”

When a speaker declares something in the present perfect, it means that the condition being described—forgetting things, in this case—has continued up to the point of speaking, but the condition might have ceased thereafter. 

If the condition of forgetfulness has been subsisting from the past till the present without respite, meaning that it’s a permanent condition, the present tense will apply:

“Being a quadriparetic makes me forget things, even those that are important.”
----------------
*Quadriparesis is the medical term for weakness of all four limbs, both arms and both legs, as for example from muscular dystrophy.

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Why redefine “rule of law” at this late stage of the game?

Reader Leoncio Contreras e-mailed me the excerpt below from the November 20, 2011 Philippine Daily Inquirer column of UP sociology professor Randy David entitled “Rule of law and public esteem.” Mr. Contreras headlined the e-mail “‘Rule of Law’ is a misnomer. The more accurate phrase would be ‘Rule According to Law’” accompanied by this note: “From my favorite columnist, Randy David on his PDI column Nov. 19. Thought of you having already read the whole article, the opening I like most. Sharing with you.”

The excerpt from Randy David’s column (italicization mine):

Being neither a lawyer nor a sociologist nor a political scientist, I’m inclined to comment only as a student of language with respect to Mr. Randy David’s very strong assertion that “rule of law” is a misnomer and that the more accurate phrase for it would be “rule according to law.”

I really can’t see the point in Mr. David’s wanting to change the public perception of the sense of the term “rule of law” at this time that it appears to be under heavy assault. From what I can gather, “rule of law” is a well-established concept in jurisprudence whose linguistic accuracy is beyond cavil. 

Here’s a definition of “rule of law” that I found in BusinessDictionary.com:

I also found that “rule of law” as a concept and as a principle is duly recognized and embraced by the United Nations, as we can see in the following declaration by the UN:

Based on this well-established and widely recognized meaning and character of the phrase “rule of law,” I really can’t see the wisdom and propriety of declaring that term “a misnomer” at this particularly tumultuous time in our national life. That seems to me akin to a cavalier rejection of “rule of law” as the lay public and the rest of the democratic world have always known and embraced it; indeed, it looks like a veritable attempt to change the rules of the game right in the middle of the game.

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