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Very frequent preposition misuse mars today’s English journalism

Over the weekend, my quick run-through of the major Metro Manila broadsheets and TV news websites yielded a bumper crop of flawed English grammar, most of them involving serious preposition misuse. It looked as if not a few of their news reporters and feature writers suddenly developed preposition amnesia, and as if their editors simultaneously lost their zest for ferreting and straigthening out faulty preposition choices.

To see what I mean, take a look at the following seven cases of preposition misuse:

(1) GMA News: Misuse of the preposition-pronoun combination “of which”; nonsensical sentence construction

In the lead sentence above, the qualifying phrase “the idea of which I didn’t relish to begin with” is grammatically, structurally, and semantically faulty. It misuses the preposition-pronoun combination “of which,” giving the wrong sense that the noun “Intramuros” is the originator and possessor of the idea of going to that place. (Click this link to a recent posting of mine explaining the usage of “on which.”) The correct sense is, of course, that going to Intramuros was the idea of the writer herself, as can be seen in this rewrite of that sentence:

“It was too rainy a Sunday to go to Intramuros, an idea that I didn’t relish to begin with, what with memories of losses riddling those old structures from Letran to the site of the first Ateneo, from San Agustin Church to the Manila Cathedral, to Fort Santiago.” 

In the above rewrite, it’s clear that the appositive “an idea that I didn’t relish to begin with” refers to going to Intramuros on a rainy day.

As to the second sentence of that lead paragraph, “National losses yes, but even more so loves in crevices left by loss,” I must admit that I’m still at a loss what it means. The intended idea got lost in that vague and twisted sentence construction.

(2) ABS-CBN News: Faulty placement of prepositional phrase up front of a sentence

The lead sentence above is so confusing because it has improperly placed the prepositional phrase “before Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Bro. Armin Luistro and other DepEd officials” ahead of the main clause of the sentence. As a result, a strong but wrong impression is created that the proper nouns in that prepositional phrase are part of a serial enumeration that includes the noun phrase “2009 CNN Hero of the Year Efren Peñaflorida and his colleagues at the Cavite-based Dynamic Teen Company (DTC)” (which, of course, is the compound subject of the main clause). This isn’t the intended sense, though.

For clarity and ease of reading, it’s not advisable to place such modifying prepositional phrases up front of such sentence constructions. Instead, they should normally be positioned after the operative verb of the main clause, as in this revision of that problematic sentence:

“CNN 2009 Hero of the Year Efren Peñaflorida and his colleagues at the Cavite-based Dynamic Teen Company (DTC) presented to Department of Education officials led by Secretary Bro. Armin Luistro the methods by which their group rescued children from the streets through their now-famous Kariton Klasrum.”

This time it’s crystal clear who the true subjects and who the true objects of the sentence are.

(3) ABS-CBN News: Missing preposition “with” in a quoted statement

A grammatically flawed statement under quotation marks doesn’t exempt it from being corrected when it’s reported in the news. Also, when for some reason it’s not advisable to paraphrase it (as in this case), the reporter or editor is duty-bound to indicate the error in some way for the reader’s benefit.

This should have been done in the case of the second paragraph of that lead passage: “It is better to struggle the hardship of education than to taste the bitterness of ignorance.” The verb “struggle” is an intransitive verb, and as we all know, an intransitive verb can’t act on an object directly. It needs a preposition to grammatically connect to that object. In the particular case of that quotable quote, the verb “struggle” needs the preposition “with” to work properly in that sentence.

As a corrective measure, therefore, the least the reporter or the editor could have done was to indicate the grammatical error in either of these two ways:

Correct it: “It is better to struggle [with] the hardship of education than to taste the bitterness of ignorance.”
or
Mark it without correcting it: “It is better to struggle [sic] the hardship of education than to taste the bitterness of ignorance.”

Not to do this is to condone the grammatical error and legitimize it.

(4) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Misuse of the of the adverb “so” and of the preposition “than”; unparallel sentence construction

In the lead sentence above, it’s incorrect to use the adverb “so” and the preposition “than” in the verb phrase “has been endowed with so much tourist attractions than the ancient town of Guiuan in Eastern Samar.” Since the subject “tourist attractions” is a countable noun, the correct adverbial modifier is “more than,” as shown in this revision of that lead sentence:

“Perhaps no other place in Eastern Visayas has been endowed with more tourist attractions than the ancient town of Guiuan in Eastern Samar.”

As to the second sentence of the lead paragraph above, it suffers from structurally defective and unparallel construction. The following alternative parallel constructions will make that sentence read correctly:

“It is not only rich in history and culture but also boasts of many natural wonders.”
or
“It is not only rich in history and culture but also in many natural wonders.”
or
“It boasts not only of a rich history and culture but also of many natural wonders.”

Take your pick.

(5) The Manila Bulletin: Misuse of the preposition “to”

The lead sentence above wrongly uses the phrasal verb “convert to” in the prepositional phrase “to ‘convert’ Internet shops and barangay centers to alternative classrooms.” The correct phrasal verb is “convert into,” so that sentence should be rewritten as follows:

“The Department of Education (DepEd) plans to ‘convert’ Internet shops and barangay centers into alternative classrooms to ease overcrowding in public schools.”

(6) The Freeman (Cebu): Misuse of the preposition phrase “resulting to”; improper word choices

The peculiar verb phrase “engaged in thrash talking” in the lead sentence above is highly improper and unjournalistic. A more appropriate wording for that phrase is “engaged in a verbal tussle” or perhaps “had a heated verbal exchange.”

Also, the phrase that follows, “resulting to one threatening to hit the other,” is a classic wrong prepositional phrase—“resulting to” should be “resulting in.” That grammar error is further compounded by the use of this very awkward phrase: “one threatening to hit the other.” A more appropriate idiomatic phrase for describing that situation is “almost came to blows.”

Here’s a rewrite of that problematic sentence using those two grammatical fixes:

“Tensions ran high as the lawyers of Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia and the late vice governor Gregorio Sanchez, Jr. yesterday engaged in a verbal tussle and almost came to blows.”

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

(1) GMA News: Misuse of defining relative clause; grammatically and semantically wrong noun phrase construction

In the lead sentence above, it is incorrect to use “which” to link the defining relative clause “which holds the world’s highest concentration of marine life diversity” to the main appositive phrase “located at the center of the coral triangle.” It is also grammatically incorrect to use a comma before the relative clause in such a construction, so that comma must be dropped, and the correct function word to use in that sentence is the conjunction “that.” That sentence therefore needs to be rewritten as follows:

“The Philippines, located at the center of the coral triangle that holds the world’s highest concentration of marine life diversity, may have even more secrets hidden in its ecosystems.”

In the second sentence of that lead passage, the phrasing of the subordinate clause “they may have discovered 75 new species of marine and terrestrial creatures endemic to the Philippines” is grammatically and semantically incorrect, for it wrongly casts doubt on the discovery of the 75 new animal species, not on whether those species are really new and previously undiscovered species. The correct sense will emerge by amending that subordinate clause, as shown in the following rewrite of the entire sentence:

“Scientists comprising the 2011 Philippine Biodiversity Expedition of the University of the Philippines (UP) and the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced on Wednesday that they have discovered what could be 75 new species of marine and terrestrial creatures endemic to the Philippines.”

(2) GMA News: Semantically flawed phrasing

In the lead sentence above, the verb phrase “has yet to stop gathering evidence on” conveys the semantically flawed sense that the Aquino administration is finding it difficult to put a halt to a compulsive evidence-gathering activity against the past government. The phrase that will yield the correct sense is “continues to gather evidence,” as can be seen in the following rewrite of that problematic sentence:

“The Aquino administration continues to gather evidence of the supposed anomalies committed by the past government, and is just waiting for the next Ombudsman to be appointed to file the necessary complaints.”

(3) The Manila Times: Failed wordplay

Because of faulty phrasing and wrong preposition choices, what might have been a delightfully witty lead sentence had degenerated into failed wordplay. Indeed, this statement, “The order for repast hereabouts sounds too near to the military than the alimentary — “sutukil,” borders on the  nonsensical for the following reasons:

(a) It uses the uncommon noun “repast” instead of the more easily recognizable “meal”;
(b) It uses the legalese “hereabouts” instead of the plainspoken “here”;
(c) It wrongly uses of the phrase “sounds too near” instead of “more like”; and
(d) It wrongly uses the phrase “than the alimentary” instead of “than an alimentary one.”

Here’s how that sentence and the sentence next to it might have looked and sounded had they been well-done:

“The usual way of ordering meals here sounds more like a military command than an alimentary one—sutukil.

“That order could indeed be mistaken for “shoot to kill,” but for Negrenses, it spells out their staple culinary delights: sugba (broiled seafood), tula (fish-based soured soup), and kilaw…”

(4) The Manila Bulletin: Wrong subordinating conjunction; awkward phrasing

The lead sentence above wrongly uses the subordinating conjunction “after.” It should be “when” instead because it’s evident that the victims sustained their injuries simultaneously with the plane crash, not after it.

Also, the choice of words for the subordinate clause “while it was having its regular taxi” is grammatically and semantically flawed. It wrongly uses the word “taxi” as a noun, which means “aircraft,” when it should be used as a verb instead to mean “to operate an aircraft on the ground under its own power.” The more appropriate phrasing is “while taxiing routinely.”

So here’s that problematic sentence as corrected:

“Three people, including an Iranian national, were hurt when a three-seater Cessna training plane crashed while taxiing routinely at the municipal airport of Maconacon town Wednesday morning.”

(5) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Improper use of the adjective up; imprecise account of events

In the first sentence of the lead passage above, the use of the adjective “up” in the noun phrase “floods up to 2 meters deep” evokes a contradictory sense. Normally, depth is associated with a downward measure or movement rather than an upward one, as in “down to 2 meters deep.” In contrast, flooding is measured by a rise or increase in height of the floodwaters.

In this particular case, I’d say that a more appropriate and precise phrasing is “floods up to 2 meters high.” Even better is “floods as deep as 2 meters.”

In the third sentence of the lead passage, the sequence of events in the phrase “had a narrow escape when a landslide crushed their house minutes after they had abandoned it” is flawed chronologically. The family had a narrow escape not when the landslide crushed their house; this couldn’t be the case because they had already abandoned that house before it was crushed by the landslide. The following rewrite of that sentence renders the correct sense and the actual sequence of events:

“Relief officials also said that a family of six in Laguna province had a narrow escape when they abandoned their house just minutes before a landslide crushed it.”

(6) The Manila Times: Skewed statement due to inappropriate sentence construction

When you read the lead sentence above, you get the strange, even macabre sense—at least until 28 words later into the sentence—that those two lawmakers were so foolhardy as to eat double-dead milkfish and tilapia just to prove that they are safe to eat. This false sense is the result of (1) making the “massive fishkills in Batangas and Pangasinan” the subject of the sentence, thus giving the strong impression that it was double-dead fish that the lawmakers had eaten for show, and then (2) delaying till the tail end of the sentence the true context and point of the whole exercise, which is “to prove that it is safe to eat the country’s fishes as much as before.”

See how, along with some refinements of its rather spotty grammar, a major restructuring of that whole lead passage can make the intrepid act of those lawmakers look more sensible and logical:

“To prove that it is still safe to eat fish in the country despite the massive fishkills in Batangas and Pangasinan, seven lawmakers dined on various milkfish and tilapia dishes in the presence of members of the media last Wednesday.

“The House members who demonstrated that eating fish today remains safe were…”

(7) The Manila Bulletin: Redundancy

In the lead sentence of the passage above, the prepositional phrase “in a bid to discourage the public from throwing wastes into rivers” is redundant because it’s merely a repeat in other words—a virtual paraphrase—of “violators who indiscriminately throw garbage into natural waterways” in the main clause. Thus, even without that redundant phrase, the sentence can very well stand on its own and say exactly the same thing:

“The provincial government is offering cash rewards to persons reporting violators who indiscriminately throw garbage into natural waterways.”

(8) The Manila Bulletin: Seriously overloaded and convoluted sentence

If you found the sentence above utterly confusing (as I did), it’s because it’s groaning under the weight of so many words. Worse, the appearance of its operative verb, “attended,” is delayed by as many as 57 words into the sentence. In English, what a sentence is saying can best be understood when the operative verb is positioned as close as possible to the subject or doer of the action.

The problem with that sentence is that an extremely long procession of nouns and noun phrases was used as its subject, resulting in a breathlessly long compound noun phrase. This could have been easily avoided by using the noun phrase “7th anniversary of ‘Pondo ng Pinoy’ (PnP) as the subject instead, as follows:

“The incessant downpour and heavy traffic notwithstanding, the 7th anniversary of “Pondo ng Pinoy” (PnP) was celebrated last Thursday at the Cuneta Astrodome on Roxas Boulevard, Pasay City, with thousands of lay and religious representatives from various Catholic groups in attendance.

“The celebrators consisted of catechists, diocesan clergy, and transparochial charismatic communities as well as representatives from the Archdiocese of Manila, member schools of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP), and the 89 parishes under the thirteen Vicariates of the Archdiocese of Manila.”

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