MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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One or two flies in the English ointment of the major broadsheets

No doubt the most important news story during the past few days is, depending on your personal persuasion and preference, a tossup between (a) the official start of filing of certificates of candicacy for the 2010 national elections, and (b) the triumphant return of Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao from his precedent-setting victory over Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto.

I therefore took a strong interest in how the four national broadsheets reported these two commanding events in Philippine national life. I was hoping that considering the high readership interest in these two stories, the reporters and editors of the broadsheets would accord them their grammar and journalistic best. For this reason, I expected very slim pickings in terms of bad grammar and usage for My Media English Watch this week.

Well, to their credit, the four majors did admirably well in their reportage on the two big events. In fact, when I went through their respective headline and sidebar stories, I spotted only one or two little flies each in their English ointment, so to speak.

Here they are:

(1) Philippine Star: Serious misuse of the coordinating conjunction “as”    

Lead sentence of front-page headline story:

“Serious candidates avoided the first day of filing of certificates of candidacy (COCs) yesterday as Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo expressed no surprise over the assortment of characters who came early to do so.”

(2) Manila Bulletin: A bewildering run-on sentence

Lead sentence of sidebar story:

“The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has stepped up its education campaign on the country’s first fully automated polls aimed at making the masses familiar with the revised voting process using new ballots in which their votes contained therein will be counted by the Precinct Count Open Scan (PCOS) machines.”

(3) Manila Bulletin: A pronoun with a missing antecedent noun

Lead sentence of sidebar story:

“No matter how much they deny it, many people still believe that there is truth to the Manny Pacquiao-Krista Ranillo rumored romance. Both Manny and Krista camps have denied the rumor (also that one saying Krista is pregnant) but more people tend to believe that the two are indeed “lovers,” ever since they started filming “Wapacman,” an entry to the forthcoming Metro Manila Film Festival.”

(4) Philippine Daily Inquirer: An indefinite article where it’s unnecessary

Lead sentence of front-page headline story:

“MANILA, Philippines – They came in the tens of thousands, braved a staggering heat, and showered him with accolades no other Filipino boxer had ever received. Some called him ‘King’ and one student in a St. Paul University uniform screamed: ‘Take me as your scholar!’”

MY CRITIQUE AND SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS:

Let’s now analyze each of the four problematic passages above and see how they can be improved or rectified.

(1) Philippine Star: Serious misuse of the coordinating conjunction “as”   

“Serious candidates avoided the first day of filing of certificates of candidacy (COCs) yesterday as Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo expressed no surprise over the assortment of characters who came early to do so.”

Quickly read that sentence and you’ll find that it’s so logically and temporally mixed up that it almost sounds absurd. It’s actually saying that the serious candidates avoided the first day of filing of COCs because Comelec Chairman Melo—hold your breath now!—because the good chairman “expressed no surprise over the assortment of characters who came early to do so.” Notice the strong cause-and-effect relationship—a false and illogical one—between the Comelec chairman’s expressing “no surprise over the assortment of characters who came early to do so” and the decision of the serious candidates not to file their COCs on the first day of filing. Such an absurd statement gives rise to the following question: If the Comelec chairman did express surprise over the assortment of characters who had come early to file their COCs, would the serious candidates have come and filed their COCs? Got the illogic and wrong drift of that lead sentence now?

The semantic problem in that sentence is, of course, due to its misuse of the coordinating conjunction “as,” which wrongly conveys simultaneity of the two non-simultaneous actions. In my experience, “as”—a seemingly small, benign word—is actually one of the most misused and abused conjunctions in print journalism, thus causing so much inadvertent illogic in newspaper reporting. This frequent misuse obviously arises from the fact that “as” functions in so many ways in English—as an adverb, as in “as lovely as Helen” to mean “to the same degree or amount”; as a coordinating conjunction, as in “She closed her eyes as he kissed her” to mean “while” or “when,” indicating simultaneity, or as in “We walked as we had no ride” to mean “because” or “since,” indicating causality; and as a preposition, as in “They voted as a block” to mean “like,” indicating similarity.

Notice that the lead sentence in question uses “as” in none of the senses or meanings enumerated above—a clear indication that “as” is indeed not the right word for the sense intended by that sentence. So, if not “as,” what should that word be?

The most logical word is—had that paper’s reporter and desk editors only given it more thought—is the coordinating conjunction “and.” The function word “and,” we will remember, serves to join sentence elements of the same grammatical rank or function, which is the case for the element “serious candidates avoided the first day of filing of certificates of candidacy (COCs) yesterday” and the element “Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo expressed no surprise over the assortment of characters who came early to do so.” These elements are what are called coordinate clauses, and given the sense and logic of their relationship in the sentence in question, the appropriate coordinating conjunction for them is definitely not “as” but “and” instead. We must keep in mind, too, that the use of “and” as a coordinating conjunction clearly indicates that two independent but co-equal clauses are being linked in an additive—not in a cause-and-effect—sense.

See how the correct logic for that problematic sentence readily comes through when we replace “as” with “and”:

“Serious candidates avoided the first day of filing of certificates of candidacy (COCs) yesterday, and Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Melo expressed no surprise over the assortment of characters who came early to do so.”

One more thing: In such sentence constructions, we must make sure to put a comma before the “and” so there’s absolutely no mistaking that “and” is working as a coordinating conjunction between two coordinate clauses.

(2) Manila Bulletin: A bewildering run-on sentence

“The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has stepped up its education campaign on the country’s first fully automated polls aimed at making the masses familiar with the revised voting process using new ballots in which their votes contained therein will be counted by the Precinct Count Open Scan (PCOS) machines.”

If, like me, you find the above sentence so bewildering and confusing, it’s because it’s a run-on sentence at least three times over. As we will recall in our English grammar, a run-on or fused sentence is one where two or more clauses are improperly linked or wrongly punctuated, resulting in a badly articulated and confusing statement. Such a sentence often crams and delivers too much information in one long, nonstop burst with hardly any punctuation (as in this particularly convoluted case), thus mixing up its semantics in the process. It also results when the writer or editor is so gung-ho about dropping the subordinating conjunction “that” in sentences involving relative noun clauses. (In this case, the phrase “that is” was unilaterally dropped from this sentence, “The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has stepped up its education campaign on the country’s first fully automated polls that is aimed at making the masses familiar with the revised voting process…”—making the logic of that sentence fuzzy from that point onward.)

The best way to deal with run-on sentences is, of course, to boil it down into clearer, more manageable chunks of ideas, punctuate them properly, and—if need be—link them with the appropriate function words, whether coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, or conjunctive adverbs.

Look at this rewrite of the original run-on sentence:

“The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has stepped up its education campaign on the country’s first fully automated polls, aiming to familiarize the masses with the revised voting process. This process uses ballots in which the votes will be counted by so-called Precinct Count Open Scan (PCOS) machines.”

In the above reconstruction, note that the sentence was spun off into two sentences. The first sentence consists of a main clause modified by a phrase introduced by the progressive form “aiming” in place of the original “that” clause. The second sentence spins off the particulars of the Precinct Count Open Scan (PCOS) machines to relieve the first sentence of too much detail. Because of the decision to spinoff of the run-on sentence into two sentences, there was no need anymore to use coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, or conjunctive adverbs.

(3) Manila Bulletin: Wrong pronoun for an antecedent noun

“No matter how much they deny it, many people still believe that there is truth to the Manny Pacquiao-Krista Ranillo rumored romance. Both Manny and Krista camps have denied the rumor (also that one saying Krista is pregnant) but more people tend to believe that the two are indeed “lovers,” ever since they started filming “Wapacman,” an entry to the forthcoming Metro Manila Film Festival.”  

In the first sentence of the above news lead, the pronoun “they” in the modifying clause is in serious trouble. What is its antecedent noun? Is it “many people”? Of course not; otherwise, those “many people” would be the ones denying their own belief. Could it be “Manny Pacquiao-Krista Ranillo”? Neither, for the simple reason that it isn’t a noun but an adjective—yes, it’s an adjective!—modifying “rumored romance.” If that’s the case, could it be the “Manny camp” or the “Krista camp”? No, neither, because camps are not capable of one-on-one romance; only people are. So, sirit na, ano nga ba ang antecedent noun ng “they?”

Well, the answer is that it isn’t there in that sentence—that antecedent noun is missing in action—so we need to look for it and supply it. That antecedent noun is, of course, the compound noun “Manny Pacquiao and Krista Ranillo,” and we better put it now where it should be or the couple might get into more trouble—grammar ones—on top of their rumored romantic liaison. This is supposed to be the art of putting the horse before the cart.

Here goes:

“No matter how much Manny Pacquiao and Krista Ranillo deny it, many people still believe that there is truth to their rumored romance. Both the Manny and Krista camps have denied the rumor (also that one saying Krista is pregnant) but more people tend to believe that the two are indeed “lovers” ever since they started filming…”

Enough said.

(4) Philippine Daily Inquirer: An indefinite article where it’s unnecessary

“MANILA, Philippines – They came in the tens of thousands, braved a staggering heat, and showered him with accolades no other Filipino boxer had ever received. Some called him ‘King’ and one student in a St. Paul University uniform screamed: ‘Take me as your scholar!’”

The unnecessary article—“a”—in the first sentence of the lead paragraph above may be small fry, but its use here reveals an inadequate understanding of the role of indefinite articles for a certain class of uncountable nouns with an unspecified referent, like “heat” in that sentence. Other nouns in the same class are “fun,” “joy,” and “teamwork”; they don’t need the indefinite article “a” even if an adjective comes between them and the noun. We don’t say “We had a great fun!”; instead we say, “We had great fun!” In the same token, we don’t say “She expressed an indescribable joy”; instead we say, “She expressed indescribable joy.” And, of course, we don’t say “The tennis partners have a great teamwork”; instead we say, “The tennis partners have great teamwork.”

So now we have to knock off that “a” in the sentence in question and say:

“They came in the tens of thousands, braved staggering heat, and showered him with accolades no other Filipino boxer had ever received. Some called him ‘King’ and one student in a St. Paul University uniform screamed: ‘Take me as your scholar!’”

Another thing: I still can’t figure out why the student in school uniform who screamed “Take me as your scholar!” had to be singled out as one from St. Paul University. Is this a new kind of journalism—this backhanded slap on an educational institution, this very subjective, unwarranted, and probably demeaning mention of names for dramatic effect or local color? I would like to answer that question myself, but I realize that the subject is outside the province of My Media English Watch, so I will stop now right at this point.

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