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MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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More grammar and syntax blunders in flood-disaster journalism

Before the rotating power outage in eastern Metro Manila hits my place again, I’ll go straight to the point and give you a look-see at some of the major grammar and semantic problems I found today in the four major Philippine broadsheets.

Broadsheet A:
(1) Front-page headline story
“MANILA, Philippines –From 60% to 70% towns in Pangasinan are under water due to continuous rains brought by tropical depression ‘Pepeng’ (international name: Parma), officials said.”

Broadsheet B:
(1)
“MANILA, Philippines - Four days after typhoon Ondoy struck large parts of Metro Manila and Central Luzon, Jeremy (not his real name) went back to his devastated house somewhere in a middle-class subdivision in Quezon City to check the family residence. Everything had been wiped out.”

Broadsheet C:
(1) Front-page story
“Instead of flushing out the around 100,000 undocumented Filipinos in Europe, the European Union (EU) plans to legalize their stay for helping keep the continent’s economy afloat amid the global economic crisis.”

Broadsheet D:
(1) Regional news
“A team of medical specialists from the Department of Health Regional Office and the Bohol Provincial Health Office have been sent to Danao town to check on reports of a flu outbreak in an elementary school.”
(2)
“Notwithstanding “problematic figures” indicated by NEDA 7 for Central Visayas, the business community are hopeful about an economic rebound happening in the region by yearend.”
(3)
“Southeast Asian Airlines has announced donations to flood victims may still be dropped off at the SEAIR office in Cebu.”
(4)
“Six workers died when they were trapped inside the Taytay Municipal Health Office in Palawan which was gobbled up by shattered concrete blocks and landslide Wednesday noon.”
(5)
“Renewed confidence in the business process outsourcing sector is expected to have major call centers in the country expanding their operations to Cebu.”

MY CRITIQUE AND SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS:

Let’s now analyze each of the problematic sentences above and see how they can be improved.

The phrase “from 60% to 70% towns in Pangasinan” isn’t only extremely awkward but also terribly ungrammatical—and to think that it’s in a front-page headline story. A simple preposition-and-article fix by the paper’s deskmen could have done wonders to that sentence. Also, since “under water” in that sentence looks every bit an adjective complement, it should be the single-word adjective “underwater” instead.

(1) Corrected:
“MANILA, Philippines –From 60% to 70% of the towns in Pangasinan are underwater due to continuous rains brought by tropical depression ‘Pepeng’ (international name: Parma), officials said.”

I don’t think Typhoon Ondoy was that selective—striking only large parts of Metro Manila and Central Luzon; I know for a fact that even its small parts took the brunt of the floods, too. The semantics of the sentence therefore leaves much to be desired. “Large portions” or “large areas” would be much more appropriate.

Better:
(1) Semantically correct:
“MANILA, Philippines - Four days after typhoon Ondoy struck large portions of Metro Manila and Central Luzon, Jeremy (not his real name) went back to his devastated house somewhere in a middle-class subdivision in Quezon City to check the family residence. Everything had been wiped out.”

Also semantically correct:
“MANILA, Philippines - Four days after typhoon Ondoy struck large areas of Metro Manila and Central Luzon, Jeremy (not his real name) went back to his devastated house somewhere in a middle-class subdivision in Quezon City to check the family residence. Everything had been wiped out.”

This is one particular construction where using “around” as an adverb to mean “approximately” results in such ugly, tongue-twisting phrasing! Read that sentence aloud to see what I mean. To make that sentence much more pleasing to the ears, try “estimated” or—if you don’t mind being polysyllabic—even “approximately.”

Much more euphonious:
(1a)
“Instead of flushing out the estimated 100,000 undocumented Filipinos in Europe, the European Union (EU) plans to legalize their stay for helping keep the continent’s economy afloat amid the global economic crisis.”

Also good-sounding:
(1a)
“Instead of flushing out the appoximately 100,000 undocumented Filipinos in Europe, the European Union (EU) plans to legalize their stay for helping keep the continent’s economy afloat amid the global economic crisis.”

Both lead sentence 1 and lead sentence 2 suffer from the most common scourge of English grammar—subject-verb disagreement—that newspaper deskmen are supposed to routinely correct.

In lead sentence 1, since the antecedent noun of the operative verb is the singular “team,” the plural verb form “have been sent” is wrong; it should be the singular “has been sent” instead. All of the intervening nouns between the true antecedent noun and the operative verb—“medical specialists,” “the Department of Health Regional Office, “the Bohol Provincial Health Office”—shouldn’t count in the determination of whether the operative verb should be in the singular or plural form.

(1a) Corrected:
“A team of medical specialists from the Department of Health Regional Office and the Bohol Provincial Health Office has been sent to Danao town to check on reports of a flu outbreak in an elementary school.”

The subject-verb disagreement error in lead sentence 2 is even more basic; after all, the subject and operative verb are adjacent to each other so there shouldn’t be any confusion. Since “business community” is singular, the verb obviously shouldn’t be the plural form “are” but the singular form “is” instead.

(2a) Corrected:
“Notwithstanding “problematic figures” indicated by NEDA 7 for Central Visayas, the business community is hopeful about an economic rebound happening in the region by yearend.”

(3)
“Southeast Asian Airlines has announced donations to flood victims may still be dropped off at the SEAIR office in Cebu.”

This is a simple sentence made confusing by the habit of many writers and editors to elide or knock off the relative pronoun “that” without thinking of the possibly serious adverse consequence—grammatical bedlam. Indeed, while “that” can be safely elided in several sentence constructions, it should be done with great care and circumspection. Better still, the elided version should be read aloud to see if the sentence is still working properly.

With “that” restored:
(3a)
“Southeast Asian Airlines has announced that donations to flood victims may still be dropped off at the SEAIR office in Cebu.”

(4)
“Six workers died when they were trapped inside the Taytay Municipal Health Office in Palawan which was gobbled up by shattered concrete blocks and landslide Wednesday noon.”

This sentence suffers from a double-whammy: a grammar error and a word-choice error.

First, the relative pronoun “which” should be “that” instead because what follows it is a restrictive clause (“was gobbled up by shattered concrete blocks and landslide Wednesday noon”). In American English, “which” is reserved for nonrestrictive clauses or those that the sentence can do without.

Second, the verb phrase “gobbled up” obviously doesn’t semantically reflect what “shattered concrete blocks” and a “landslide” do in reality. Evidently, “buried” is more appropriate in this case.

(4a) Corrected:
“Six workers died when they were trapped inside the Taytay Municipal Health Office in Palawan that was buried by shattered concrete blocks during a landslide Wednesday noon.”

(5)
“Renewed confidence in the business process outsourcing sector is expected to have major call centers in the country expanding their operations to Cebu.”

The readability of this sentence suffers for two reasons: the absence of the article “the” before the word “renewed,” and a poor choice of verb. The verb “have” is grossly inappropriate and simply can’t deliver the action contemplated by the writer in this sentence. An action-packed verb like “entice” will do very nicely here.

(5a) Corrected:
“The renewed confidence in the business process outsourcing sector is expected to entice major call centers in the country to expand their operations to Cebu.”

There! I’ve just beaten the rotating power outage. This will be all for My Media Watch this week!

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