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MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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I am inviting Forum members to team up with me in doing My Media English Watch. This way, we can further widen this Forum’s dragnet for bad or questionable English usage in both the print media and broadcast media, thus giving more teeth to our campaign to encourage them to continuously improve their English. All you need to do is pinpoint every serious English misuse you encounter while reading your favorite newspaper or viewing your favorite network or cable TV programs. Just tell me about the English misuse and I will do a grammar critique of it.

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16 instructive cases of flawed English in the media outlets

Last weekend, I came across a total of 16 very interesting and instructive cases of flawed English usage in the four major Metro Manila broadsheets and in the news website of one of the major TV networks. It’s quite difficult to give a general description of the those wide-ranging grammar and usage errors, so I’ll go straight to the individual cases and critique them right off.

Here we go:

(1) Manila Bulletin: Misused figurative expression

Beauty and Bounty of Bicolandia

MANILA, Philippines—There is certainly more to Mayon Volcano and the butanding in the Bicolandia than meets the eye. Find out as the region unveils its best-kept secrets in the grand Gayon Bikol sa OK Bikol Trade and Tourism Fair set at the SM Megamall Megatrade Hall from October 6 to 9.

Organized by the regional offices of the Department of Tourism (DoT) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the event combines Gayon Bikol travel mart and the Orgullo kan Bikol One Town, One Product (OTOP) trade fair.

The lead sentence above has obviously misused the figurative expression “more (to somebody/something) than meets the eye,” which means “more interesting than something appears at first.” “Mangled” is perhaps a better description of what was done to that figure of speech, with two semantically ruinous elements (“Mayon Volcano,” “butanding”) injected into it (“The nature of true idioms,” “Learning the English idioms”).

That sentence can be constructed correctly in two ways.

  1. If the writer prefers the rhetorical flourish of “more than meets the eye,” the details “Mayon Volcano” and “the butanding” must be dropped altogether. That lead paragraph would then read this way:

    There is more to Bicolandia than meets the eye. Find out as the region unveils its best-kept secrets in the grand Gayon Bikol sa OK Bikol Trade and Tourism Fair set at the SM Megamall Megatrade Hall from October 6 to 9.”

  2. If the writer can live without “more than meets the eye” as rhetorical flourish, that lead paragraph can be rewritten with the details “Mayon Volcano” and “the butanding” intact, as follows:

    There is more to Bicolandia than just Mayon Volcano and the butanding. Find out as the region unveils its best-kept secrets in the grand Gayon Bikol sa OK Bikol Trade and Tourism Fair set at the SM Megamall Megatrade Hall from October 6 to 9.”

I’m afraid that we can’t have “more than meets the eye” both ways semantically!

(2) Manila Bulletin: Misplaced modifying phrase; mixed tenses

Science high school to rise in Siargao

GENERAL LUNA, Siargao Island, Surigao del Norte, Philippines – After years of waiting, a science high school will finally rise in this “paradise island” of Surigao del Norte.

The dream of parents, teachers and local officials came true when Budget Secretary Florencio Abad Jr. along with his wife Rep. Dina Abad, lead the groundbreaking ceremony for the General Luna Science High School Saturday.

Abad will be accompanied by Surigao del Norte Rep. Francisco T. Matugas (1st District), Gov. Sol F. Matugas and General Luna Mayor Peter Ruaya.

The lead sentence above has fallen victim to a misplaced modifying phrase. Because of its bad positioning, that modifying phrase wrongly modifies “science high school” instead of its true and legitimate subject, “Surigao del Norte.” That science high school, being both inanimate and nonexistent yet, obviously isn’t capable of waiting; it’s the province that’s capable of doing that.

Here then is that lead passage as corrected, with the misplaced phrase in the lead sentence now modifying its proper subject, and with the mixed tenses corrected into a unified future tense:

“GENERAL LUNA, Siargao Island – After years of waiting, this “paradise island” of Surigao del Norte will finally have its own science high school.

“The dream of parents, teachers and local officials will come true when Budget Secretary Florencio Abad Jr. along with his wife Rep. Dina Abad, lead the groundbreaking ceremony for the General Luna Science High School Saturday.

“Abad will be accompanied by Surigao del Norte Rep. Francisco T. Matugas (1st District), Gov. Sol F. Matugas and General Luna Mayor Peter Ruaya.”

(3) Manila Bulletin: Subject-verb disagreement

Cavite peace and order improves

IMUS, Cavite, Philippines — Peace and order and crime solution efficiency has improved in Cavite with the intensified police drive against crime being implemented in this province’s four cities and 19 towns.

This was the gist of the monthly reports that Senior Superintendent John C. Bulalacao, director of Cavite Police Provincial Office (PPO), have submitted to Governor Jonvic Remulla and the seven district representatives of the province to update the officials on crime statistics and their significant accomplishments in the area.

The lead sentence above has a subject-verb disagreement in the clause “peace and order and crime solution efficiency has improved in Cavite.”  We know, of course, that the nouns in the term “peace and order” are so inseparable that they are considered singular together, thus needing the singular form of the verb. When that term is compounded with “crime solution efficiency,” however, the both of them now make for a plural subject. The singular verb phrase “has improved” is therefore wrong. It should be in the plural form “have improved” instead, as in the following corrected version of that lead sentence:

Peace and order and crime solution efficiency have improved in Cavite with the intensified police drive against crime being implemented in this province’s four cities and 19 towns.

(4) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Misuse of the word “expanse”

Philippines braces for Typhoon ‘Quiel’ today

There will be no rest for the flood-weary.

Typhoon “Quiel” (international name: Nalgae) on Friday gained strength and expanse as it hurtled toward Luzon, threatening the northern and central regions, the very same regions barely  recovering from Typhoon “Pedring,” with more rains and floods and disrupting reconstruction efforts.

The second sentence of the lead passage above misuses the noun “expanse” in the phrase “gained strength and expanse.” The noun “expanse” can’t be compounded with “strength” because “expanse” is an abstract, intangible concept that’s used to indicate the “great extent of something spread out” while “strength” is a measurable force or power. One way out of this semantic incompatibility is to convert the noun “expanse” to the verb phrase “swept through a wider area” so it can be properly compounded in parallel with the verb phrase “gained strength,” as follows:

“Typhoon ‘Quiel’ (international name: Nalgae) on Friday gained strength and swept through a wider area as it hurtled toward Luzon, threatening the northern and central regions, the very same regions barely  recovering from Typhoon ‘Pedring,’ with more rains and floods and disrupting reconstruction efforts.”

(5) The Philippine Star: Multiple grammar errors in the same lead passage

3 dead in Bulacan floods

MANILA, Philippines - Three people, including two minors, died in flood-hit Calumpit in Bulacan province as typhoon “Quiel” slammed into Isabela province yesterday morning, bringing heavy rains and strong winds in Northern Luzon areas that were still reeling from the devastation brought by a previous storm.

Calumpit Mayor James de Jesus confirmed the fatalities – a 5-year-old who drowned in Brgy. Corazon, a 16-year-old who died of hypothermia, and another person killed due to snake bite.

The lead sentence above evokes a strange logical disconnect for two reasons: (a) its semantically flawed use of the verb “including” in the phrase “three people, including two minors”; and (b) the apparent unrelatedness between Typhoon “Quiel” slamming into Isabela province and the death of the three people Calumpit, Bulacan several hundred kilometers away. Indeed, that sentence fails to establish cause and effect between those two events.

  1. Problematic use of “including”: Let’s first take up the use of “including” by that sentence. By definition, “include” suggests the containment of something as a constituent, component, or subordinate part of a larger whole, as in the sentence “Metro Manila includes Pasig City,” where “Metro Manila” is the larger whole and “Pasig City” a subordinate part of that larger whole. We can readily see that this sense of the verb “includes” doesn’t apply to the phrase “three people, including two minors” because the term “two minors” constitutes a bigger component than the only adult among the “three people.” In other words, in this particular case, the term “two minors” comprises more of the “three people” than the single adult in that group.

    Grammatically, therefore, that phrase is better worded as “three people, including an adult” to properly establish the plurality of the two minors over the single adult in that group. This, however, isn’t the way the journalistic mindset works. In this mindset, all things being equal, “adults” are generally considered of higher primacy and of higher news value than “minors.” This is why news writers and editors tend to use the inaccurate phrase “three people, including two minors.”

    In such situations, the intended sense is actually that of “in the number or class of,” which is best captured by using the preposition “among.” See how that sense emerges clearly and unequivocably when the problematic phrase is reworded as “three people, among them two minors” or “three people, among whom were two minors.”
  1. Failure to establish cause and effect: What makes the logic of that lead sentence tangled and confusing is the misuse of the coordinating conjunction “as.” This conjunction, which is used in the sense of “when” or “during,” fails to semantically establish that a typhoon battering Isabela could drown three people in Calumpit, a town several provinces away from Isabela. This causality could only be understood if there’s a preceding declaration to the effect that the swath of Typhoon “Quiel” was so wide as to make it batter Bulacan as well, but there’s no such prior declaration in this case. The other semantic complication is that Bulacan is not part of Northern Luzon, which the lead sentence declared as having taken the brunt of “the heavy rains and strong winds” brought by Typhoon “Quiel.” In short, that sentence makes what happened in Calumpit look like a non sequitur—a result that doesn’t follow logically from the premise of the statement. Indeed, only a total rewrite of that lead sentence could put it in the proper grammatical and semantic footing.

Here then is how I propose to reconstruct that lead sentence to fully clarify what it intended to say:

“Three people, among them two minors, were confirmed yesterday to have died as a result of the heavy flooding of Calumpit in Bulacan province. This came about even as typhoon ‘Quiel’ slammed into Isabela province yesterday morning, bringing heavy rains and strong winds in Northern Luzon areas still reeling from the devastation brought by a previous storm.”

This time, it’s clear that the deaths in Calumpit and the battering of Isabela province by Typhoon “Quiel” were two separate and independent events.

By the way, below is an example of the semantically correct usage of the verb “including” in the context of my grammar critique above:

‘Pedring’ death toll hits 43; damage over P4B

The nationwide death toll from Typhoon “Pedring” has climbed to 43, including 17 children. At least 44 others were reported injured and 30 still missing.

The highest number of deaths occurred in Central Luzon with 20, followed by the National Capital Region with 6, and Mimaropa (Region 4-B) with 5.

(6) Philippine Star: Seven grammatical errors all in a row

Lighting, twister kill 2 in South Cotabato

MANILA, Philippines - A farmer and a seven year-old girl were killed while five other schoolchildren were injured after a lightning and a twister hit three towns in South Cotabato yesterday afternoon.

The Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (PDRRMC) said the towns hit by lightning and a twister were Norala, Tantangan and Polomolok towns.

In Norala town, farmer Walter Priales died after he was hit by a lightning while plowing a rice field in Barangay Liberty.

Senior Police Office 4 Rodolfo Ospital of the Norala police station said the victim and his carabao were severely burned after the lightning struck them while a thunderstorm was looming on Thursday afternoon.

The lead sentence above is grammatically flawed four times over, as follows: (a) It misuses the subordinating conjunction “while” in the sense of “during the time that,” a sense logically  provided by the additive conjunction “and”; (b) It misuses the adjective “other” in the sense of being also schoolchildren like the seven-year-old girl who died, despite the absence of any antecedent information that that girl was also a schoolchild; (c) It misuses the preposition “after” in place of the correct “when” for indicating simultaneity of actions; and (d) It needlessly uses the article “a” in the term “a lightning” (a misuse that’s repeated in the third paragraph), when idiomatic usage doesn’t require an article for the noun “lightning.”

In the third paragraph, the flawed phrasing of “a lightning while plowing a rice field in Barangay Liberty” creates the absurd impression that it was the lightning that was plowing the field and not the farmer.

In the fourth paragraph, the phrase “while a thunderstorm was looming” is a needless rhetorical flourish that also ignores the fact that “lightning” in such circumstances is already subsumed by the term “thunderstorm,” which by definition is “a storm accompanied by lightning and thunder.” In short, that sentence can do very well without that redundant phrase.

So here’s how that lead passage would read with all of the above corrections:

Lighting, twister kill 2 in South Cotabato

MANILA, Philippines - A farmer and a seven year-old girl were killed and five schoolchildren were injured when lightning and a twister hit three towns in South Cotabato yesterday afternoon.

The Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (PDRRMC) said the towns hit by the lightning and twister were Norala, Tantangan and Polomolok towns.

In Norala town, farmer Walter Priales died after he was hit by lightning while he was plowing a rice field in Barangay Liberty.

Senior Police Office 4 Rodolfo Ospital of the Norala police station said the victim and his carabao were severely burned after the lightning struck them Thursday afternoon.

(7) GMA News Online: Specious language for a straight news story

Typhoon Quiel’s eye nears Isabela town; zero visibility noted

Zero visibility threatened to veil some areas in Isabela province as the eye of Typhoon Quiel (Nalgae) approached a coastal town there before 8:30 a.m. Saturday.

Powerful winds were felt along Maharlika Highway and threatened to uproot trees there, radio dzBB's Carlo Mateo reported.

The lead passage above uses the emotionally charged figurative verb “threatened” not just once but twice. The first time around, it speciously pairs off that verb with the even more figurative “to veil,” and the second time, it uses “threatened” to apply to trees, as if trees can, in fact, feel the emotion of being threatened. I don’t think this is the proper way to characterize the behavior of a typhoon in a news story, no matter how menacing that typhoon might be from the writer’s standpoint.

So what do we do to queasy, melodramatic news writing like that? I’m really at a loss how, but perhaps the following rewrite would make for more matter-of-fact reporting:

“Some areas in Isabela province had almost zero visibility as the eye of Typhoon Quiel (Nalgae) approached a coastal town there before 8:30 a.m. Saturday.

“Powerful winds were felt along Maharlika Highway, almost uprooting some trees there, radio dzBB’s Carlo Mateo reported.

(8) The Manila Times: Double misuse of the verb phrase “is set”

Cagayan, Isabela brace for powerful ‘Quiel’

LUZON, badly battered by Typhoon Pedring (international codename: Nesat), is set to get another pounding from powerful Typhoon Quiel (international codename: Nalgae), which is set to make landfall early today in the Cagayan-Isabela area in Northern Luzon.
Areas hit by Pedring are likely to be hit again because Quiel’s path and strength are almost the same as Pedring, weather officials said on Friday.

The lead sentence above awkwardly uses the verb phrase “is set” twice, each in the sense of “scheduled” as if, in fact, typhoons can be scheduled like, say, regular TV programming. This isn’t the case in reality, however, so that usage is definitely wrong semantically, and in both cases is also a redundancy.

See how much better that lead sentence reads without that offending verb phrase:

“Luzon, badly battered by Typhoon Pedring (international codename: Nesat), will be getting another pounding, this time from powerful Typhoon Quiel (international codename: Nalgae), which makes landfall early today in the Cagayan-Isabela area in Northern Luzon.”

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