YOU ASKED ME THIS QUESTION

What’s the difference between a résumé and a curriculum vitae?

Question by melvinhate, Forum member, July 10, 2014:

What do we have to consider in writing a résumé? Is it different from a curriculum vitae?

My reply to melvinhate:

A curriculum vitae and a résumé generally refer to the same thing—a summary of an individual’s accomplishments, career, and qualifications—but their form and information content will depend on the purpose, on the institution or company requiring them, and on the part of the world where they are required. 

In the United States, in particular, a curriculum vitae is typically required when applying for academic, education, scientific, or research positions as well as for fellowships or grants; a résumé is required when applying for work employment. In contrast, submitting a curriculum vitae instead of a résumé is generally required when applying for a job in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, or Asia.

As a rule, a curriculum vitae is longer and more detailed than a résumé. It provides a more detailed synopsis of the individual’s background and skills together with a summary of his or her educational and academic backgrounds as well as teaching and research experience, publications, presentations, awards, honors, affiliations, and other details. Take note that the extent or level of disclosure of personal information in a curriculum vitae or résumé might differ from country to country; in an American résumé, in particular, the date of birth, nationality, and place of birth of the job applicant is by statute not required nor must be indicated.  

The website About.com provides detailed discussions of how to write a curriculum vitae and a résumé. Simply click the following links to read them:

About.com Curriculum Vitae Writing Guide
About.com Résumé Writing Guide

You can find and download several résumé forms from the site Instant Résumé Templates, particularly for professional, career change, entry-level, and basic academic purposes.

Armed with the information above, anyone should be able to whip up an excellent curriculum vitae or a résumé for any specific purpose.

Click to read responses or post a response

View the complete list of postings in this section
(requires registration to view & post)

What tense should be used in research reports?

Question from melvinhate, Forum member (July 10, 2014):

What tense must be used in describing the result of your research? How about those published researches that you want to include in your research discussion? Is consistency of tense still to be observed?

My reply to melvinhate:

Since researchers have to establish that they have in fact undertaken the research, it's logical for them to use the past tense in reporting its methodology and results in a step-by-step chronological fashion. Previous researches cited when discussing the report should likewise be rendered in the past tense. Although consistency of tense will be virtue in such reporting, however, it need not be a straitjacket. This is particularly when reporting well-established research routines that are better described in the present tense—but, of course, rendered as reported speech as in this hypothetical example:

“We followed the following procedures prescribed by Smith et al in their landmark 1997 experiments:

“1. Immerse the material in a boric acid solution;
“2. Heat the solution to 85 degrees Centigrade;
“3. Titrate the heated solution to eliminate impurities that settled at the bottom...”

Click to read responses or post a response

View the complete list of postings in this section
(requires registration to view & post)

Avoidance options for the pesky “who” vs. “whom” conundrum

Question e-mailed by reader Edsel Ocson, May 7, 2014:

I hope you still accept inquiries from readers.

I read recently in one of the Manila broadsheets the following sentence:

“I remember a memorable experience, in the 1970s, with my paternal grandmother, a feisty devout Buddhist living in Davao WHO I FREQUENTLY VISITED.” (capitalization mine)

Is the use of “who” in the above sentence correct or acceptable? Or should “whom” be used instead?

Thank you for your attention.

My reply to Edsel Ocson:

Yes, of course, I continue to accept inquiries about English grammar from readers of my column in The Manila Times and from members and visitors of Jose Carillo’s English Forum online. Questions are most welcome in both and I make every effort to answer them as fast as I can. But when a question is sent to me by e-mail, it tends to get swamped by other e-mails in my mailbox and I’m unable to attend to it quickly enough. This is precisely what happened to your very interesting question, which got into my mailbox last May 7 yet. For a faster response from me, I suggest that you either post your questions directly in the responses section of my column in the Times or in a Forum discussion board of your choice. If you wish to keep your inquiry private, however, you can post it in my Personal Messages box in the Forum.

Now to your question: Is the use of “who” in the sentence below that you presented correct or acceptable, or should “whom” be used instead?

“I remember a memorable experience, in the 1970s, with my paternal grandmother, a feisty devout Buddhist living in Davao who I frequently visited.”

Offhand, I must tell you that prescriptive grammarians condemn the use of the subjective “who” in that construction and would demand adamantly that it be replaced with the objective “whom.” Personally, though, I find that replacement ill-advised because the resulting sentence would sound too formal, stilted, and stuffy: “I remember a memorable experience, in the 1970s, with my paternal grandmother, a feisty devout Buddhist living in Davao whom I frequently visited.”

I’d rather that the sentence retain “who” to keep that sentence natural-sounding and pleasantly informal the way the writer of the narrative obviously intended it to be. Better still, just to avoid getting into heated arguments over the use of “who” or “whom” in that sentence, I’d seriously consider replacing “who” with “that,” as follows: “I remember a memorable experience, in the 1970s, with my paternal grandmother, a feisty devout Buddhist living in Davao that I frequently visited.”

I’d even go to the extent of rewording the sentence to get rid of “who” and “whom” and of “that” altogether while retaining the sense and tonality intended by the original sentence, as in this rewrite: “I remember a memorable experience, in the 1970s, with my paternal grandmother, a feisty devout Buddhist I frequently visited in Davao.” (The aspect of the subject’s “living” in Davao is lost in the reconstruction, of course, but I think it’s a small price to pay for avoiding the “who” vs. “whom” debate and nicely streamlining the sentence as well.)

Why should we go to such lengths when presented with the choice between “who” and “whom” or taking recourse to “that” for such sentence constructions? It’s because aside from being highly debatable, using either “who” or “whom” is often too problematic from both the style and language register standpoints. The grammatically unassailable “whom,” which is the true objective-case form of “who,” just doesn’t sound right to the modern ear; in many cases, in fact, “whom” imbues an unwanted pedantic, standoffish academic tone to what should be an informal, conversational statement. On the other hand, using “who” instead gives both the writer and the reader the uncomfortable feeling that something’s not right with the sentence.

(As I write this, a Harvard Magazine mailer landed on my mailbox with this very timely advertorial question from the Harvard Medical School: “Whom Will You Honor This Mother’s Day?” That interrogative construction is actually one of the “whom” usages that I can tolerate without being overpowered by the itch to change it to “who,” but frankly, I’d be more comfortable and at peace with that message if it had used “who” in the first place: “Who Will You Honor This Mother’s Day?”)

Anyway, to round off my feelings about the “who” vs. “whom” conundrum, let me share with you my posting in the Forum way back in November 2009 in response to a Forum member’s question similar to yours (“Usage of infinitives and of “who vs. whom”):

That said, I’m referring you to the usage guides for “who” and “whom” provided by the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. They are unanimous in their assessment of “whom” as a highly problematic personal pronoun, and they provide numerous techniques for avoiding its use or—at the very least—for using it in undebatable reconstructions that don’t alter the statement's intended tonality or language register.

Read the usage note for “who” and “whom” by the American Heritage Dictionary now!
Read the usage guide for “who” and “whom” by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary now!

Postscript (May 24, 2014):

I do realize that connoisseurs of good written English would object to the iffy syntax of the original sentence and even my two “who”/“whom” avoidance rewrites for it. To them I offer this total rewrite: “I remember a memorable experience in the 1970s with my paternal grandmother, a feisty devout Buddhist. She lived in Davao and I used to visit her frequently.”

Click to read responses or post a response

View the complete list of postings in this section
(requires registration to view & post)

The choice between the indicative “is” and the subjunctive “be”

Question e-mailed by Farhad H. from Karaj, Iran (April 28, 2014):

Which choice is correct? Please explain your reasons.

“As a matter of fact, ESP combines subject matter and English language teaching. Such a combination is highly motivating because students are able to apply what they learn in their English classes to their main field of study, whether it ________ accounting, business management, economics, computer science, or tourism.”

(a) is
(b) be

Thank you for taking the time to help me.

My reply to Farhad H.:

Frankly, to make a choice between “whether it is” and “whether it be” in that statement that you presented can just get you bogged down trying to figure out whether that statement is in the indicative mood or subjunctive mood. This early, therefore, I’ll already tell you that in that sentence construction, the best choice—but not necessarily the only choice—is neither the indicative “is” nor the subjunctive “be” but using no linking verb at all. You will then end up with the following no-frills, concise, and straightforward construction for that second sentence:

“Such a combination is highly motivating because students are able to apply what they learn in their English classes to their main field of study, whether accounting, business management, economics, computer science, or tourism.”

The above sentence is an example of elliptical construction, where the omission of one or more words that are obviously understood—in this case the words “it is” or “it be”—doesn’t change the meaning or sense of the sentence; instead, the excision makes the sentence more readable and better-sounding.

If elliptical construction isn’t resorted to, however, there really would be a need to formally figure out whether that second sentence is in the indicative mood or in the subjunctive mood. 

Recall now that the indicative 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. As we all know, their operative verbs take their normal inflections in all the tenses and typically obey the subject-verb agreement rule at all times. 

In contrast, the subjunctive mood is used to communicate the following: (1) a possibility (2) a desire or wishful attitude, (3) insistence on a particular action, (4) doubt about a certain outcome, (5) an unreal situation or an idea contrary to fact, or (6) a request or suggestion. The subjunctive form of the verb is used when the outcome of the action is not being asserted as a certainty but is only being supposed, being assumed or feared to be true, or being doubted. In the particular case of the present-tense subjunctive, keep in mind that the linking verb “be” exhibits the deviant behavior of not changing form at all no matter what person or number is taken by the subject. This explains why “be” rather than “is” is used in such subjunctive constructions as “So be it,” “Be that as it may,” and ““The university will also support the Church in its future actions should the bill be passed by Congress.” In such sentences, the outcomes are not certainties but are only being hoped for or assumed to happen given a certain condition.

Now let’s look closely at the second sentence of the statement that you presented: “Such a combination is highly motivating because students are able to apply what they learn in their English classes to their main field of study, whether it ________ accounting, business management, economics, computer science, or tourism.”

To figure out whether that sentence is in the indicative or subjunctive mood, we have to ask this question: Are the conditions in the clause “whether it ________ accounting, business management, economics, computer science, or tourism” being asserted as objective choices or alternatives, on one hand, or as hoped for or doubtful outcomes, on the other? 

By close inspection, those conditions are clearly objective choices or alternatives in a real-world situation, not hoped for or doubtful outcomes in the mind of the writer or speaker. That sentence is therefore one in the indicative mood, and the correct form of the linking verb for it is the indicative “is”:

“Such a combination is highly motivating because students are able to apply what they learn in their English classes to their main field of study, whether it is accounting, business management, economics, computer science, or tourism.”  

But then again, as I suggested at the very outset, it would be much better to use the following elliptical construction—without the words “it is”—to make that statement more concise and readable as well as better-sounding: 

“As a matter of fact, ESP combines subject matter and English language teaching. Such a combination is highly motivating because students are able to apply what they learn in their English classes to their main field of study, whether accounting, business management, economics, computer science, or tourism.”

Click to read responses or post a response

View the complete list of postings in this section
(requires registration to view & post)

How conditional indicative sentences differ from subjunctives

Question e-mailed by Edsel Ocson, who describes himself as an interested reader (April 12, 2014):

In your recent article about media people and the subjunctive mode (“Some recurrent misuses of the English subjunctive”), I found the following sentence: “It would really be a shame if an otherwise well-written reportage or well-argued commentary is needlessly undermined by faulty subjunctive construction.”

Don’t you think the word “is” in the above sentence should be changed to “were”?

My reply to Edsel Ocson:

No, the “is” in that sentence of mine shouldn’t be changed to “were” because it’s not a subjunctive sentence but a conditional sentence in the indicative mood. A conditional sentence is the type of sentence that conveys the idea that the action in the main clause can take place only if the condition in the subordinate clause—the “if”-clause—is fulfilled; its mood is indicative because it denotes acts and states in real-world situations, as in that sentence of mine that you are asking about. On the other hand, a subjunctive sentence is one that denotes acts or states that are contingent on possible outcomes of the speaker’s wish, desire, or doubt; it is in subjunctive sentences using an “if”-clause that the verb “be” exhibits maverick behavior, sticking to the past-tense subjunctive form “were” all throughout, regardless of the person and number of its subject.

This sentence of mine is in the indicative mood because, as I indicated earlier, it denotes an act and a state in a real-world situation: “It would really be a shame if an otherwise well-written reportage or well-argued commentary is needlessly undermined by faulty subjunctive construction.” It belongs to the type of conditional sentence called the zero conditional (certainty), which denotes a condition whose result is always true and always the same. In such conditional sentences, the “if” clause states the condition in the simple present tense, is followed by a comma, then is followed by the result clause also in the simple present tense, as in this basic example: “People get dehydrated if they don’t drink water” or, in the inverted form, “If people don’t drink water, they get dehydrated.” The sentence of mine that’s in question here has precisely the same conditional form: “It would really be a shame if an otherwise well-written reportage or well-argued commentary is needlessly undermined by faulty subjunctive construction” or, in the inverted form, “If an otherwise well-written reportage or well-argued commentary is needlessly undermined by faulty subjunctive construction, it would really be a shame.” (Here, as a nuance, I used “would” as a weaker form of the present-tense indicative “will.”)

Now I will explain why the word “is” in that sentence of mine can’t be changed to “were,” a change that conceivably would make it a subjunctive sentence. It’s because that sentence describes the outcome of an act or state in a real-world situation, making it indicative in the conditional sense. If we revise that sentence to describe the outcome of an unreal situation or idea contrary to fact, then it would become a subjunctive sentence that uses the subjunctive “were” instead of the indicative “is.” A usual way to do that is to express the condition as a wish: “Deeply embarrassed, the reporter wished that his otherwise well-written reportage or well-argued commentary were not needlessly undermined by faulty subjunctive construction.”

That sentence describing an outcome of an unreal situation or idea contrary to fact is just one of the many kinds of subjunctive sentences in which the verb “is” exhibits deviant behavior, consistently taking either the form of “were” or “be” regardless of the person and number of its subject. It will take so long to discuss all those types of sentences now but I’ll be taking them up in detail in the subsequent installments of my column in today’s issue of The Manila Times, “Some recurrent misuses of the English subjunctive.” Of course, you have the option of going to Jose Carillo’s English Forum now to check out my previous postings on conditional sentences (start with “Do better than a calculated guess in handling conditional sentences”) and subjunctive sentences (start with “When are subjunctive sentences called for and how are they constructed?”). Doing that now will definitely give you a head start and an edge in attaining mastery of these rather confusing and tricky aspects of English grammar.

Click to read responses or post a response

View the complete list of postings in this section
(requires registration to view & post)

Using euphemism to cushion the blow of request rejections

It’s tempting to say that plain, simple, and forthright English is the best way to phrase a response, but there are highly sensitive situations when it could be such a terrible aggravation. For such situations, we need to take recourse instead to euphemism—an indirect, gentler phrasing of our message so it won’t cause offense or arouse hostility. This is the kind of English that I would advise when, say, rejecting applications for a requested service like a credit card, a postpaid smart phone facility, or perhaps a car or housing loan.

Let’s hear from DMP, a customer service representative who asked for advice last March 20, 2014 on how to deal with such tough on-the-job communication situations:

My reply to DMP:

When turning down somebody’s service application for reasons that are sensitive in nature, you will need to say it in something other than plain, simple, and forthright English. You have to take recourse to euphemistic language, or an agreeable or inoffensive statement that won’t suggest something unpleasant. This, of course, is nothing less than applied diplomacy—the skill of handling affairs without arousing hostility. It’s an art form that needs to be learned and practiced purposively and rigorously both in words and in action.

Let’s see how you might euphemistically phrase your responses to the three situations you presented:

1. Rejection due to bankruptcy status: “We regret that we will be unable to approve your service application at this time due an unfavorable report we have obtained about (your, your company’s) current credit status.”

2. Rejection due to impending company closure: “We regret that we will be unable to approve your service application at this time due to advice we received that your company will be ceasing operations in the immediate future.”

3. Rejection due to negative feedback from the applicant’s family: “We regret that we will be unable to approve your service application at this time due to unfavorable advice we received from your family regarding the need for the service.”

General statements like these are usually designed to redirect the onus of the rejection from the entity making the rejection to an agency other than the applicant himself or herself. The statement need to be phrased in a way that doesn’t pointedly pass judgment on the applicant but encourages a quiet, nondefensive self-reappraisal of why he or she can’t be given what is being requested or asked for.

I trust that these thoughts will be of help to you in fashioning your service rejection letters.

Click to read responses or post a response

Why are legal documents and contracts hard to understand?

Question by bonruiz, Forum member (March 5, 2014):

Sir, I hope you can enlighten me on why legal documents and contracts use too many unnecessary words that are not direct to the point and hard to understand? 

Is this a lawyer’s standard procedure so he can be the only one who can interpret and make money out of it? 

Most legal contracts and documents are too wordy, not direct to the point and confusing (terrible grammar). Is this standard practice in law? Why can’t they make it simple and precise?

My reply to bonruiz:

Your first question is why legal documents and contracts use too many unnecessary words, words that you say are not direct to the point and are hard to understand.

The answer is that these legal documents and contracts use a language that’s called legalese—the jargon or specialized language that lawyers use to communicate with fellow lawyers and other members of the legal community, particularly justices, judges, and paralegals. This language presumes that the target audience—whether readers or listeners—is adequately knowledgeable with legal concepts and the legal system. This is why to laypersons not equipped with or are not privy to this knowledge, legalese would read and sound much too wordy for comfort and, very often, beyond understanding and comprehension.

Your next question is whether the use of legalese is a standard procedure of lawyers so that only they can interpret the document or contract and thus be able to make money from those who need or have use for those documents and contracts.

I think that this is a very harsh assessment of the motivation of lawyers in writing or speaking in legalese. Here, from a lawyer who writes under the username WiseGeek, is I think a fair, levelheaded justification for legalese:

In contrast, here’s a more candid justification for the complexity of legalese from a lawyer who blogs under the username SoMeLaw Thoughts:

Now, your third question is whether it’s standard practice in law to make most contracts and documents too wordy, not direct to the point, confusing—and also to have terrible grammar.

I doubt if it’s standard practice in law to deliberately and viciously make contracts and documents very wordy, not direct to the point, confusing—and also to make their grammar terrible. Legalese is, I think, simply the present-day outcome of centuries of overcareful, overzealous, overprecise, overwrought, and overbearing formulation, implementation, interpretation, and application of the law in evolving societies. It’s an arcane, stultifying language that generations of lawyers and other legal practitioners have not seen fit or bothered to simplify for clarity of expression and for easier understanding by laypeople. Indeed, for no better reason than convenience, modern-day legal practitioners still resort to and freely use many of the English-language legal templates and language quirks that date back to Victorian England and even earlier. They do so as if totally oblivious of the evolution of the English language in our Telecommunication Age towards accuracy, brevity, and clarity. I also think this is precisely why you’ve gotten the wrong impression that most contracts have terrible English grammar. Actually, on close examination, their English grammar would most often be aboveboard, except that their syntax and construction are those of a long bygone era, when those documents were still laboriously composed by longhand using quill and ink. In a very real sense, then, most contracts and legal documents today are composed by lawyers as if they are living in a time warp, making them—both the documents and the lawyers—sound terribly outdated, even archaic.

Your last question is whether it’s possible to make contracts and legal documents simple and precise. My personal answer is that, particularly in a democratic country like ours, it’s not only possible but highly desirable. In recent years, in fact, there has been a growing movement in North America and in the United Kingdom to use plain and simple English not only in contracts and legal documents but also in court litigation and in legislation, the better for laypeople to understand, appreciate, and follow the law as well as to assert their rights and fulfill their responsibilities as members of society. Read, for instance, “Lawyers Should Use Plain Language,” an article by Carol M. Bast in the Florida Bar Journal for a comprehensive discussion of the plain language trend and legislation in the United States. 

Let’s just hope that the plain language movement and legislation will soon catch on in the Philippines as well.

--------------
For a much richer appreciation of how legalese differs from plain and simple English, read:
“A Visit from St. Nicholas” (’Twas the Night Before Christmas), a poem by Clement Clarke Moore
then compare to:
“The Night Before Christmas, Legally Speaking” (Parody)

Click to read responses or post a response

View the complete list of postings in this section
(requires registration to view & post)

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.

Click to read responses or post a response

View the complete list of postings in this section
(requires registration to view & post)

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?

Click to read responses or post a response

View the complete list of postings in this section
(requires registration to view & post)

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.

Click to read responses or post a response

View the complete list of postings in this section
(requires registration to view & post)