Jose Carillo's Forum

BADLY WRITTEN, BADLY SPOKEN

This page seeks to promote good English usage in everyday life—whether at home, at school, in the workplace, in public platforms, in the mass media, in books, and anywhere else where the printed or spoken word is used. In short, this page will serve as some sort of grammar police against blatant or grievous public misuses of English.

So, whenever you encounter such misuse, share it through this page in the spirit of constructive criticism. Our ultimate goal, of course, is to bring the misuse to the attention of those responsible so they can make the necessary correction.

American academic’s mangled metaphor wins bad writing prize

Forum member Ed Maranan, Hall of Famer of the Palanca Awards for Literature, copied me the very interesting news item below that came out in the July 22, 2011 issue of The Guardian in UK:

Bulwer-Lytton prize for bad writing goes to brutally mangled metaphor
American academic takes honour inspired by famously awful Victorian novel
By Alison Flood

American academic Sue Fondrie's disturbing description of thoughts like mutilated sparrows has been declared the worst sentence of the year.

Fondrie, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, beat an impressive display of terrible writing to win the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, named in honour of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford and its much-quoted opening, "It was a dark and stormy night".

Entrants to the prize are duly challenged to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.

The academic's submission to the prize, "Cheryl's mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories", makes her its 29th winner. Fondrie's sentence is the shortest winner in the prize's history, "proving that bad writing need not be prolix, or even very wordy", said organisers. 

Bulwer-Lytton's own sentence, "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness", takes the opposite approach, running to 59 words.

Fondrie later wrote on Twitter that despite her sentence's subject, she is "in no way anti-alternative energy". "My life is a little brighter knowing I'm the Worst Writer of 2011," she said. "It's only fitting that someone who teaches people how to teach would be a bad-writing winner."

"My students don't seem to mind either, as I've heard from quite a few of them already," added Fondrie. "That's the best part about it: I'm reconnecting with students from years ago. As one of them wrote, 'I knew you were awful, so it's great that you're finally getting recognised.'"

This year's Bulwer-Lytton runner-up was Rodney Reed, with: "As I stood among the ransacked ruin that had been my home, surveying the aftermath of the senseless horrors and atrocities that had been perpetrated on my family and everything I hold dear, I swore to myself that no matter where I had to go, no matter what I had to do or endure, I would find the man who did this ... and when I did, when I did, oh, there would be words."

The historical fiction category was taken by John Doble's submission: "Napoleon's ship tossed and turned as the emperor, listening while his generals squabbled as they always did, splashed the tepid waters in his bathtub", while Ali Kawashima's entry, "As the dark and mysterious stranger approached, Angela bit her lip anxiously, hoping with every nerve, cell, and fiber of her being that this would be the one man who would understand – who would take her away from all this – and who would not just squeeze her boob and make a loud honking noise, as all the others had", won the romance award.

SEE THE COMPLETE RESULTS:
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2011 Results

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Previous Feature:

How much grammatical leeway can advertisements enjoy?

Questions by Miss Mae, Forum member (August 1, 2011):

My family has been using a particular canned food product ever since I could remember. I followed the “tradition” because I like its commercials.

Recently, though, it claimed to be the “tomatoest” in the country. Would you patronize that product again if you were in my case or believe in its endorser any longer?

* * * * 

Before the 2011 school year started, a school posted a banner right outside a church enumerating the reasons why kids should study in their institution. It has “one-on-one” computer, among others. But how could that be when that adjective refers to exchanges between two persons only? Was I right for not letting my cousin study there?

* * * *

Which is correct: “The winner will receive major prizes” or “The winner will receive a major prize?” A voice-over in a commercial announced “The winner will receive a major prizes” in their promo.

My reply to Miss Mae:

You ask, “How much grammatical leeway can advertisements enjoy?” The answer is as much grammatical leeway they can get away with in this democratic, laissez-faire society of ours, and as serious a language travesty the buying public can take before they make their collective outrage heard loud and clear by the advertisers. Sadly, there’s no law or legislation against bad grammar and usage in advertising, so advertising messages are totally at the mercy of the exigencies of strong recall, as in “tomatoest” for “the most tomato-tasting” product. 

Now, you also ask, would I continue patronizing that product or believe its endorser for making that “tomatoest” claim? If the product is good for its price, I certainly would. The “tomatoest” claim isn’t enough cause for me to boycott the product. We must keep in mind that a product is distinct from its advertising. A manufacturer makes a product to satisfy a need or desire, but advertising seeks to catch attention and establish strong recall for that product. So, in a highly competitive market saturated with thousands of advertising messages, product advertisers spend fortunes and often flaunt grammar rules just to get their product messages heard above the din. There ought to be a law against that, but there isn’t.

As to that school banner’s “one-on-one” computer claim, it’s a slippery and grammatically flawed way of saying “We provide one computer for every kid who enrolls in our school,” but I think it gets its message across very concisely and rather effectively. Advertising headlines and advertising copy often tend to take liberties with language that way—sometimes deliberately mangling grammar just to get attention. But were you right for not letting your cousin study in that school for that grammar travesty? I must say I don’t think so. That decision of yours was rather rash and certainly not warranted by the gravity of the offense. It’s a non sequitur—a response that does not follow logically from its premise.

Now to your last question as to which of these statements is correct: “The winner will receive major prizes” or “The winner will receive a major prize?” I would say both are grammatically correct for their different contexts. The first statement promises several major prizes while the second promises only one major prize. However, the voice-over in that commercial, “The winner will receive a major prizes,” obviously flubbed basic English grammar. As we all know, the article “a” isn’t needed when the noun is in its plural form. It’s probably simply a misreading of the script that the voice-over producer had overlooked—forgivable in such a frenzied, breakneck medium as broadcast television.

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Proposed rewrite of inscrutable English of magazine’s foreword

New Forum member Menie made the following posting that offers a suggested rewrite of the seriously flawed English of a college magazine’s foreword that was sent to me last August 8, 2010 by Prof. R. Muthukumar of the Department of Business Administration of NMSSVN College in Nagamalai, Madurai, India:

I see that no one has taken up the challenge of translating this to something which can be understood at first reading, so I will give it a try. Step one is a literal translation: substituting the weird words and phrases with understandable words or phrases, but retaining the general style of the sentences.

Dear Readers,

We are proud to say that this College Annual Magazine is a product of the hard work of qualified people.

It is an announcement that our college has a collection of versatile people who have clear ideas about prevalent issues in society. We believe that our readers will be invigorated after reading these articles, which deal closely with sensitive and unique ideas.

The Editorial Board thanks the members for their meritorious and sincere effort in bringing this Magazine out. We also thank Management for their encouragement and cooperation toward the successful completion of this annual book.  

Once again we bow our heads in recognition of Management’s untiring effort to uplift the condition of the college staff and to continue the progress of our college.

We also thank M/s Edison Printers for their good and prompt service.

Having understood what they are trying to say, we can then attempt to rewrite it in a better style, but still retaining all of the ideas expressed above.

Dear Readers,

We are proud to present to you this College Annual Magazine.  

This is a collection of views on prevalent issues in our society, which are examined with sensitive and unique perspectives. We hope that you will find these articles interesting and that these will move you to take further action.

We wish to thank the contributors and magazine staff for their hard work and dedication.

We also thank the school administration for their encouragement and support toward the successful completion of this magazine. We take this opportunity to acknowledge their untiring effort toward the betterment of the college staff and the continuing progress of our school.

Lastly, we thank M/s Edison Printers for their excellent work.

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“Sick books” issue goes off the deep end, then bubbles up again

There was this story in two of the broadsheets last November 9 that Education Secretary Armin Luistro visited “sick books” crusader Antonio Calipjo Go recently and encouraged him to resume his terminated crusade. This was after Mr. Go announced a few days back that he was shelving his one-man advocacy for good, having been intensely pilloried instead of being thanked for it by the publishers, authors, and editors of the targeted textbooks.

Well, what a coincidence! Just two days before that, a new member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum—his username is pedestrian—asked me to explain what those textbook errors were all about in the first place. He was belatedly responding to a June 6, 2009 editorial of The Manila Times that commented on the several dozens of questionable English passages that Mr. Go had found in six locally produced English-language textbooks. Pedestrian was saying that since there was no explanation for those errors, it’s difficult for him to learn from them.

I told pedestrian that then and now, I just didn’t have the time to critique all those problematic textbook passages, but I consented to doing the following four samplers just to give him some idea of what the problem is all about:

(1) “The rain and storm are needed to snuff out the heat in the air.” There’s nothing wrong with the grammar of that sentence, but its sophomoric use of the phrasal verb “snuff out” makes it sound infantile. To “snuff out” is much too strong and emotional a verb phrase in that statement, for it means “to extinguish (as in smothering the flame of a candle), make extinct, kill, or execute.” And to say that the rain and storm are “needed” to do that snuffing out action on heat is unwarranted personification, or inappropriately representing rain and storm as humans. Here’s a more objective, level-headed way of wording that sentence: “The rain and storm remove heat from the air.”

(2) “Just remember this acronym—DOCSiShQACNMN to make it easy for you to remember the order of adjectives in a series.” It should be obvious even to a preschooler that this is ridiculous advice—to use a tangled, tongue-twisting, terribly-hard-to-recall acronym as a mnemonic for remembering the order of adjectives in a series. We normally expect to get such advice from simpletons, not educators or textbook writers.

(3) “Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the novels ‘The Treasure Island’ and ‘The Kidnapper.’” This factually erroneous sentence is the result not only of the ignorance and laziness of the textbook writer but also the carelessness and cluelessness of the textbook editors. The correct titles of those very popular novels are Treasure Island—without the article “The”—and Kidnapped—not “The Kidnapper.” It’s really unthinkable for the author of that book not to know this, and this kind of factual error makes that textbook statement sound almost like a sick joke.

(4) “My sister is old. She can accompany me to the outing.” This statement is semantically faulty and almost laughable. It gives the idea that old age is a prerequisite for someone to qualify as a companion to an outing. This time, the problem is both semantic and grammatical. What the writer obviously wanted to say is, “My sister is old enough. She can accompany me to the outing.” The adjective “enough” would have been enough to make that statement logical, but the textbook writer evidently didn’t have enough semantic sensitivity to make that distinction.

I told pedestrian in closing that I wish someone would pick up after me and find time to dissect the remaining problematic textbook passages, which I daresay won’t be remedied by simply providing supplemental notes to the flawed textbooks, as had been done by the DepEd. Those textbooks should be withdrawn from circulation as soon as practicable, then replaced with textbooks written by semantically competent authors.

Read The Manila Times editorial on the textbooks with erroneous English!

Read “Luistro backs Go crusade” in the Philippine Daily Inquirer now!

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And we thought we’d find typos only in newspapers and books!

Mispelled Road Sign

I don’t think we can blame this one on the influence of too much short-cut texting on the mobile phone.

What do you think?

Here’s the story from Yahoo!

Cringe-inducing typo outside N.C. school
By Brett Michael Dykes

Well, here's something to make your old English teacher gasp in horror: A road contractor hired to paint the word “school” on a freshly paved stretch of road near Southern Guilford High School in North Carolina rendered the traffic area in question a “school” zone.

But fear not for the (surely confused) youth of Greensboro! The contractor, a company called Traffic Markings, has already corrected the error.  Here's visual evidence, courtesy of local TV station WXII.

WXII had some fun with the typo on the air too:

This isn’t the first such mishap on record. Last year, for instance, a Miami-area road crew offered the variant spelling of “scohol,” while in 2007, a team in Kalamazoo, Mich., managed the same “h” and “c” reversal.

Chalk it all up to a bad day’s wrok.

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Reporting English misuse:

You can report the English misuse by e-mailing a verbatim transcription or an image in GIF or JPEG format to jcarilloforum@gmail.com. When doing so, please be mindful of the laws against libel and oral defamation. Our interest is not to humiliate English-language offenders but to help them rectify the error, so there’s no need to identify them in your messages. Just indicate the city, district, street, and general location where you saw or found the particular English misuse to make it easier for those concerned to be alerted about it.

We will also need your full name, residence, e-mail address, and telephone number so we can confirm with you before the posting is made on this page. Just let us know if you don’t want to be identified in the posting so we can withhold your identity. Please keep in mind that this page will be moderated and will not entertain scurrilous reports nor those sent in by anonymous sources.

That said, you can now get started in doing volunteer police work for the sake of good English! It should be a truly gratifying educational experience and you and other English lovers can have lots of fun besides!




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Page last modified: 14 August, 2011, 1:50 p.m.