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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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When press releases seriously run roughshod over English grammar

Even people not very finicky with their English would find many of the press releases that see print in the major Metro Manila newspapers wordy, fluffy, and overstated. The major newspapers seem to have developed such a high tolerance for press releases that they hardly copyedit the materials anymore for exaggerated or unsubstantiated claims, much less for wordiness, syntax, or style. This is understandable, of course, for many of the issuers of these press releases are often also major advertisers; in fact, as part of ex-deals, some newspapers have gotten into the questionable practice of making infomercials of their major advertisers look like legitimate news and feature stories. Some have even done away with providing the traditional telltale signs of the commercial character of such media placements, such as a different typeface, distinctive boxing, and the mandatory small-letter “Advertising” label at the bottom of the infomercial. Indeed, what used to be sacrosanct space for the paper’s staple news and features now looks like free country for press releases—even if the material makes overblown claims and seriously runs roughshod over English grammar and usage.

These observations about press releases have been percolating in my mind these past several years, but I never really saw the need to put them in writing until I received the following e-mail from an editor friend of mine last Monday:

“I chanced on a sentence in a supplement material in the Nov. 28 issue of one of the major broadsheets that I thought might be an interesting case study for your English-usage forum. There is something that just doesn’t sound right in the pull quote [“blurb” in journalistic parlance] for the feature article. It says: ‘We have taken the bold step to proclaim that we are now as passionate for pasta as the way we do our pizzas.’”

MY CRITIQUE AND SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS:

Let’s now analyze the problematic passage and see how it can be improved:    

“We have taken the bold step to proclaim that we are now as passionate for pasta as the way we do our pizzas.”

Mmm….The problem here is the faulty comparative construction of the clause that I have underlined, “we are now as passionate for pasta as the way we do our pizzas.”

That phrase obviously doesn’t read well, and an eagle-eyed desk editor could have set it aright with very little effort, but precisely what’s wrong with it?

Let’s first review the basic form of the comparative construction for expressing equality, “as + adjective/adverb + as,” as in these examples: “Corrine is as studious as Claudine.” “The visitor left as quickly as he arrived.”  

Note that in the first comparative using the word “studious,” two nouns—“Corrine” and “Claudine”—are compared in terms of being “studious” (an adjective), while in the second comparative using the word “quickly,” two verbs—“left” and “arrived” are compared in terms of speed, “quickly” (an adverb). Clearly, then, only one measure or basis for comparison (either an adjective or adverb) is needed in an “as…as” comparative, and that comparison should be stated in parallel—meaning that what are being compared should have identical syntactical elements in corresponding positions.

Now look at the problematic comparative we have here: “we are now as passionate for pasta as the way we do our pizzas.” This is a comparative involving the adjective “passionate,” but it’s very fuzzy with respect to what are being compared here. Indeed, on close inspection, we find that it compares the noun “we are now” before the first “as” and “the way we do pour pizzas” after the second “as,” resulting in an absurd comparison of incomparable elements. Also, the comparison is stated in a fragmented and unparallel way, with no regard for syntactical balance altogether. This, in fact, is why that comparative statement sounds so awful.

Keeping these observations in mind, we are now in a position to rectify that flawed comparative statement. Here’s a simple, coherent, and parallel reconstruction:

“We have taken the bold step to proclaim that we are now as passionate for pasta as we are for our pizzas.”

It must be understood, however, that this comparative construction is an ellipted (shortened and streamlined) form of this full comparative statement:

“We have taken the bold step to proclaim that we are now as passionate for pasta as we are passionate for our pizzas.”

Note that this full version formally repeats the adjective “passionate” in the comparison, making the statement look and sound redundant. By employing ellipsis, however, we can drop the adjective “passionate” in the second half of the comparison to make the comparison read much better:

“We have taken the bold step to proclaim that we are now as passionate for pasta as we are [passionate] for our pizzas.”

(When the comparison involves an adverb, as in “She dances as gracefully as a prima ballerina dances,” ellipsis makes it unnecessary to repeat the verb in the second half of the comparison, and, alternatively, allows the use of only the auxiliary verb “do” in place of the verb: “She dances as gracefully as a prima ballerina.” “She dances as gracefully as a prima ballerina does.”)

Anyway, simply out of curiosity, I later searched the web for the press release where the flawed pull-quote comparative came from. I found this version of it carried by a sister newspaper of the major broadsheet (underlining mine):

“We have taken the bold step to proclaim that we are now as passionate as the way we do our pizzas,” said [a company official].

Sad to say, the comparative construction here is even more seriously flawed. This time, the comparison is between the incomparable phrases “we are now” and “the way we do our pizzas”—an absurd and unparallel comparison. Worse, the other object in the comparison, “pasta,” is missing.

Following the correct form and construction that we discussed earlier for such a comparative, and similarly applying ellipsis, that sentence should be corrected this way:

“We have taken the bold step to proclaim that we are now as passionate with pasta as we are with our pizzas,” said [a company official].

Note in particular that this version has changed the phrase “the way we do our pizzas” to “we are [passionate] with our pizzas” to effect a meaningful, semantically correct comparison.

One final note: From a language standpoint, whether that comparative statement is an actual quote of what the company official said or was simply composed by the company’s PR department, I find the prefatory statement “we have taken a bold step to proclaim…” such a pompous, overbearing statement. In the normal scheme of things, it would be the business news analysts or columnists who’d be so bold as to make such a bold evaluation of the company’s new product launch. Here, however, the company official couldn’t wait for third parties to say their piece, boldly making a self-serving critique of her company’s actions herself!

Indeed, a self-respecting desk editor or section editor would have automatically knocked off that overweening prefatory statement to make the quote read simply as follows:

“We are now as passionate with pasta as we are with our pizzas,” said [a company official].

To paraphrase that old saying, “You can’t have your pasta and eat it, too!”

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Blaming nature for taking its natural course
Take a look at this headline and lead sentence in the paper’s December 4 issue:

“Election fever fails to stop mercury drop

“MANILA, Philippines — Not even the heat of the election campaign can prevent the mercury in thermometers from dropping at this time of the year.

“The temperature in Metro Manila over the past few days has dropped below November averages, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said Thursday.”

Frankly, I find this wrongheaded attempt at human interest or humor by the paper’s reporter and headline writer utterly bizarre, illogical—even dangerous. So now this paper is blaming the current election fever for failing to become hot enough to prevent the weather from taking its natural course, which is to get colder and colder during the month of December?

Even allowing for literary license or lots of leeway in figurative language, I believe that it’s dangerous for a paper to be on an accusing and blaming mode about anything and everything that doesn’t suit its politics or fancy. The freedom of the press gives the media free rein to relentlessly attack and badger political figures not to its liking—that’s democracy as practiced in this part of the world—but to accuse the weather and natural phenomena for failure to live up to their expectations? Media should be much more rational and circumspect than that to deserve the huge power that our democratic society gives them.

(2) Philippine Star: Wrong sound-alike word—“heckle” not “hackle”

“In Manila, about 1,000 journalists and activists marched Monday to demand justice for the single worst attack on the media anywhere in the world. Thirty of the victims were journalists or their staff. The protesters hackled presidential spokesman Cerge Remonde when he tried to address them outside the president’s office.”

The intransitive verb “hackle” is the wrong word for the statement above. It means “to comb out with a hackle, a tool with long metal teeth for dressing flax, hemp, or jute.” The correct word is the transitive verb “heckle,” which means “to harass and try to disconcert with questions and challenges” or “to badger,” so the sentence has to be corrected as follows:

“The protesters heckled presidential spokesman Cerge Remonde when he tried to address them outside the president's office.”

(3) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Wrong word choice—“growth” not “drift”

“MANILA, Philippines - Twenty-first century marketing managers who are used to tri-media fare in advertising may have to make room for the fast-paced drift of a fourth virtual medium.”

“In what has been dubbed Share Revolution, communication experts that have brought us memorable ads on radio, TV and print are now trying to untangle the DNA of viral marketing, whose strands connect people to products through the World Wide Web.”

If the fourth virtual medium, viral marketing, is only drifting, why should the 21st century marketing managers worry about it no matter how fast-paced the drift? When something “drifts” it moves aimlessly without a firm destination; viral marketing, in contrast, is definitely not just drifting but growing, and this growth is what today’s marketing managers really have to reckon with. I therefore propose—no, contend—that the correct word for that lead sentence is “growth,” not “drift”:

“Twenty-first century marketing managers who are used to tri-media fare in advertising may have to make room for the fast-paced growth of a fourth virtual medium.”

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