MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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Catching the major broadsheets do their English flawlessly well

For this week’s edition of My Media English Watch, I’m truly delighted that I have such slim pickings of problematic English from the major reportage of the four Metro Manila broadsheets. This means that my grammar critiques for once would be mostly positive, short, and sweet—a state of affairs that, of course, is well in keeping with the spirit of the Christmas Season.

Take a look, for instance, at the first few paragraphs of this well-written, well-researched, and well-edited no-nonsense reportage about Mayon’s increasing volcanic activity by one of the leading broadsheets last Thursday:

Don’t you agree that the above news story is highly informative and truly effortless reading? The high quality of its narrative and of its English—in a story evidently generated in-house by the paper’s reportorial staff—is a far cry from that of the news stories I critiqued last week, when the same paper reported that “Cone-shaped Mayon Volcano could blow its top within days” (use of the trivial, irrelevant feature element “cone-shaped”; semantically inappropriate figurative language) and that the volcano “has blown its top nearly 40 times in 400 years” (same problem plus bad, misleading arithmetic), and when another paper reported that “Local and foreign tourists have started flocking to Albay to take a glimpse of the glowing lava flow from rumbling Mayon Volcano…” (use of the inappropriate verb “glimpse”; poor adjective choices; poorly motivated sentence).

None of the other Mayon stories of this broadsheet last Thursday exhibited notable problematic English. Indeed, its only story that I thought could stand improvement from a grammar standpoint is the following:

In the first sentence of the story above, the relative clause “which lies within the 6-kilometer radius danger zone from Mayon’s crater” is a very common case of what should be a restrictive modifier erroneously made into a nonrestrictive one. Also, the noun phrase “within the 6-kilometer radius danger zone” is redundant and awkwardly worded, and could be better and succinctly reworded as “within the 6 km danger zone.”

Now, before attempting to reconstruct that sentence, let’s recall that a relative clause is restrictive when it provides essential information about the subject of the sentence, and nonrestrictive when it provides information that isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence. Restrictive relative clauses, we will remember, should be linked to the main clause by the function word “that” as subordinator, while nonrestrictive clauses should be set off from the main clause by commas and introduced by either “who” for humans or “which” for nonhumans.

In the sentence in question, the relative clause “which lies within the 6-kilometer radius danger zone from Mayon’s crater” is obviously essential information about the entire village referred to. It should therefore be integral to the subject of the sentence. So, also taking into account the improvement in phrasing that I earlier suggested, that sentence then should have that relative clause in its restrictive form instead, as follows:

“GUINOBATAN, Albay—An entire village that lies within the 6 km danger zone from Mayon’s crater has virtually relocated to an elementary school-turned-evacuation center here.”

Of course, that sentence can be constructed even more concisely by reducing that relative clause, “that lies within the 6 km danger zone from Mayon’s crater,” into its relative phrase equivalent, “within the 6 km danger zone from Mayon’s crater” (where the relative pronoun “that” and the verb “lies” are ellipted or dropped from the sentence for conciseness and easier articulation), as follows:

“GUINOBATAN, Albay—An entire village within the 6 km danger zone from Mayon’s crater has virtually relocated to an elementary school-turned-evacuation center here.”

That sounds much better and crispier than the original, doesn’t it?

Except for the grammatically flawed sentence that needed the above rewrite, all of the broadsheets admirably fared well in their English for their running reportage of Mayon’s volcanic activity, so I don’t think there’s any need to make individual critiques of their stories. Frankly, it’s a good feeling to catch the major broadsheets doing flawlessly well in their English for their top stories!

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

I found serious grammar and usage problems in three lesser news stories of one of the broadsheets, though.

(1) Subject-verb disagreement

Drug test on foreign students urged

“CEBU CITY — The Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) wants foreign students taking up language courses in the country to be subjected to random drug testing, especially with the recent arrest of Korean students in Cebu for marijuana use.

“To date, over 12,000 thousand high-school students have undergone random drug testing. The concern of the DDB Vice chair is that there has been reports of foreign students enrolled in language centers caught using drugs.”

In the expletive clause “there has been reports of foreign students enrolled in language centers caught using drugs,” the true subject of the clause is the noun “reports,” which is plural. The operative verb should therefore be in the plural form “have been” instead of the singular form “has been.” The sentence in question then needs to be corrected as follows:

“To date, over 12,000 thousand high-school students have undergone random drug testing. The concern of the DDB Vice chair is that there have been reports of foreign students enrolled in language centers caught using drugs.”

(2) Needless use of adverb; use of wrong tense of verb

Thieves break into Baguio city hall

“BAGUIO CITY — Probers are now facing a blank wall on how unidentified robbers are able to burglarize four offices in the eastern portion of the two-story city hall building here early Tuesday morning.”

This sentence is badly written and badly edited, with its needless use of the adverb “now” (what were they facing before anyway?) and the verb “unidentified” and its wrong use of the present tense “are able to bulglarize” instead of the present tense “were able to bulglarize.”

Here’s that sentence as corrected:

“BAGUIO CITY — Probers are facing a blank wall on how robbers were able to burglarize four offices in the eastern portion of the two-story city hall building here early Tuesday morning.”

(3) Unedited or badly edited story

Zero crime in Cavite

“There were no major crimes incidents in Cavite in the last six days, the police provincial office said Tuesday.
***
“Big crimes were a virtual nil during the ‘Simbang Gabi’ (dawn mass) days, they said.
***
“In Imus, the province’s capital and the site of the diocese, there were no single incidents that have been reported at the municipal police station from December 16, the day “Simbang Gabi” started until Wednesday (December 23).”

In the first sentence, the phrase “There were no major crimes incidents” is ungrammatically and awkwardly worded. Correct: “There were no major crimes.”

In the second sentence, the clause “Big crimes were a virtual nil” is awkwardly worded. Better: “Big crimes were virtually nil.”

In the third sentence, the clause “there were no single incidents that have been reported” is convoluted, redundant, and badly worded. Better: “not a single incident was reported.”

So here’s that problematic passage as corrected:

“There were no major crimes in Cavite during the last six days, the police provincial office said Tuesday.
***
“Big crimes were virtually nil during the ‘Simbang Gabi’ (dawn mass) days, they said.

***

“In Imus, the province’s capital and the site of the diocese, not a single incident was reported at the municipal police station from December 16, the day ‘Simbang Gabi’ started until Wednesday (December 23).”

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