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Pleasant days when media’s English grammar errors get scarce

After a noticeable upsurge of English grammar and usage errors during the past few weeks, the four major Metro Manila broadsheets and two major TV news websites did quite well with their English during the past few days. I was pleasantly surprised to find only five notable cases of English misuse in just three of the media outlets, as follows:

(1) Manila Bulletin: Semantically flawed sentence due to use of wrong verbs

The lead sentence above is semantically and logically flawed due to wrong verb choices and improper correlation of events. The transitive verb “spark” means to “set off in a burst of activity” or to “incite,” and this sense of frenetic activity is incongruous with the notion of “sighs of relief,” which denotes a sense of rest and alleviation. A more appropriate verb, if a verb must be used at all in that clause, is “heave,” as in “The sighs of relief heaved by the residents…” As I’ll show later, though, there’s no need for that verb in that clause as the simple adverb “over” will do.

The other semantically misused verb in that lead sentence is “turned.” It’s wrongheaded to think of the “sighs of relief” of people in one place as having “turned” into the “cries of dismay” of other people in another place. Those two actions are independent and mutually exclusive, and each of those two actions involved a different set of people, so even in a figurative sense, there’s absolutely no way for those “sighs of relief” to get transformed into “cries of dismay.” Clearly, another verb is needed to properly correlate those two situations.

In the third paragraph, the use of the plural form “damages” is grammatically wrong; the correct word is the singular “damage.” The plural “damages” means compensation in money imposed by law for loss or injury. In that sentence, however, what is meant to be said is “loss or harm resulting from injury to property.” This is what “damage” in the singular form denotes.

Here, then, is a revision of those two problematic sentences that fixes those logical and grammatical flaws:

“COTABATO CITY, Philippines – The sighs of relief of residents here over the removal of a 20-hectare chunk of water hyacinth from the city’s Delta Bridge pathway were drowned by cries of dismay from seaweed farmers in the nearby coastal town of Parang, Maguindanao.”

***

“The OCD’s regional office for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) pegged the seaweed farm damage at P9.6 million based on the P120,000 production and operation cost per farm and a projected gross income of P360,000 per hectare.”

(2) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Confusing sentence due to faulty phrasing

There’s really nothing grammatically wrong with the lead sentence above, but at midsentence, it begins to read very badly and becomes confusing. This is due to the faulty phrasing of the modal statement “would start weeding out the mining industry in the region of speculators,” which inadvertently conveys the absurd notion that a “region of speculators” is being referred to. The word “region,” of course, is meant to modify “the mining industry,” but its bad placement makes it look like a noun being modified by “speculators.”

Here’s a rewrite that fixes the problem and clarifies what the sentence meant to say:

“Environment officials in Bicol said the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) would start weeding out the region’s mining industry speculators who just use their mining applications as tools to manipulate stock prices.”

(3) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Disagreement between grammar and notion; use of wrong modal; questionable claim and redundancy in a parenthetical

The lead sentence above is grammatically defective on three counts.

Firstly, there’s a grammar and notion disagreement problem in the prepositional phrase “of all the places where the statue of his likeness stands.” There will be as many statues as there are places where they stand, so that phrase should use the plural “statues” in tandem with the plural “places.” Also, the words “of his likeness” in the phrase “the statue of his likeness” are redundant; “his statues” is enough.

Secondly, the modal phrase “would probably feel most at home” is in the wrong tense; since Rizal is no longer alive, it should be in the past tense of the third conditional form (no possibility) instead, “probably would have felt most at home.”

And thirdly, the parenthetical “one of the things he valued most when he was alive” is factually questionable and grammatically flawed. That education is one of the things Rizal “valued most” is a conjectural statement that’s made to appear as an established fact, and the added phrase “when he was alive” is redundant (logically, people can no longer possibly value things when they are dead).  

Here’s a rewrite of that lead sentence that attempts to get rid of these grammar and semantic problems:

“Of all the places where his statues stand, national hero Dr. Jose Rizal probably would have felt most at home in a setting devoted to education—one of the things he valued highly.”

(4) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Wrong sense of sentence

Due to its flawed phrasing, the lead sentence above gives the sense that the latest dentist who became a holdup victim was held up in the same dental clinic where another dentist was held up previously. This isn’t the case at all, for the latest holdup took place in another clinic.

The semantic problem disappears when the adjective “another” is also used to modify “dental clinic” in that sentence, as follows:

“Another dentist was held up at another dental clinic Friday afternoon, this time in Fairview, Quezon City, by a gunman who followed the same modus operandi in a string of robberies of clinics in various areas of Metro Manila.”

(5) GMA News Online: Use of wrong tense

The lead sentence above misuses the present perfect tense. Since “Friday” is specified as the time of occurrence of the verb “urge,” it should be in the simple past tense “urged” instead of the present perfect “have urged.” It’s a well-established rule in English grammar that a verb expressing action completed at the specific time in the past should take the past tense, while a verb expressing action completed at the time of speaking should take the present perfect tense.

Here’s that lead sentence as corrected:

“Bakers on Friday urged the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to make local flour millers explain the latest increase in prices of flour while international wheat prices are declining.”

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