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Chaotic English in press releases of supposed experts in English

I am delighted to report that for the past two days (March 25 and 26), the four major Metro Manila broadsheets didn’t have any notable grammatical and semantic errors in their stories, except for the garbled, cockeyed English of what appears to be an unedited press release from—of all sources—a Philippine consultancy company specializing in the teaching of good English! What’s more, that press release appears in the Education section of the very same major broadsheet that I critiqued last week for the shoddy writing and editing of its education stories.

Here’s that badly written press release, verbatim and with its no-paragraphing format reproduced here exactly as it was published in that paper:

Philippine Star: Chaotic English from supposed English experts (Internet edition)

I really couldn’t fathom how and why a company that bills itself as “a premiere learning center with the best IELTS Review Program in the Philippines” could come up with such an atrocious, almost unreadable press release, and how and why any self-respecting Education editor would allow such a press release to be printed verbatim in—of all places!—the Education section of his or her paper.

Let’s examine the serious grammar, semantic, and structural travesties committed against good English by just the headline and the very first sentence of that press release:

1. Grammatically erroneous headline

The headline “Forging a strong, effective ties on IELTS” is grammatically wrong. Since the subject of the phrase, “ties,” is plural, the article “a” for singular items is uncalled for. That headline should read “Forging strong, effective ties on IELTS” instead.

2. An utterly confusing rigmarole of a lead sentence

Go figure what this 67-word behemoth of a lead sentence is saying:

“Forging a Strong and Effective Partnership on IELTS Test Preparation Two dedicated educational services with the same goal to provide excellent communication skills and almost perfect 9 score particularly in IELTS to all its candidates is now a reality with the recent partnership of PRN Consultancy and Educational Services (PRNCES) with its COO, Lucy Babaran, R.N. , M.B.A. and Ria Sindayen, president of Perfect 9 Learning Center.”     

What in heaven’s name is its subject? its operative verb? its predicate? What, indeed, was the writer of that press release thinking when he or she wrote this monumental piece of incomprehensible gobbledygook? Did he or she even realize that this press release is supposed to be the voice of a company that prides itself teaching reviewers nothing less than perfect English? And how could the paper’s Education editor allow this mishmash of a statement to ruin the editorial integrity of the section?

After much effort in analyzing the passage, we’ll find that the words “Forging a Strong and Effective Partnership on IELTS Test Preparation” were actually meant to be the headline of that press release, but they were carelessly built into the lead after the placeline “MANILA, Philippines” and, with no punctuation whatsoever, were made to run into the lead sentence itself as if they were an integral part of that sentence.

Fine then, let’s grant that this was an honest mistake, but we have this hard-to-decipher sentence still to reckon with:

“Two dedicated educational services with the same goal to provide excellent communication skills and almost perfect 9 score particularly in IELTS to all its candidates is now a reality with the recent partnership of PRN Consultancy and Educational Services (PRNCES) with its COO, Lucy Babaran, R.N. , M.B.A. and Ria Sindayen, president of Perfect 9 Learning Center.”

Now, what do we make of this statement that’s nebulously talking about “two dedicated educational services” and promising, among other things, an “almost perfect 9 score particularly in IELTS.” But, the reader may ask, what is a “dedicated educational service” to begin with and how does it differ from an “undedicated” one? What is an “almost perfect 9 score”—whether in IELTS or in anything for that matter? And, for the uninitiated in test-company acronyms, what is IELTS in the first place?

The press release doesn’t bother to clarify these things for the reader, and even before it could make its main message understood to the reader, it proceeds to breathlessly pile up acronym upon acronym into the already bewildering sentence—“PRN,” “PRNCES,” “COO,” “R.N.,” and “M.B.A.” (Let’s condone “PRN” and “PRNCES” simply as self-serving flourishes of the company issuing the press release, so there’s really no need for us to bother with them, but  for those who don’t know what the rest of the acronyms mean, “COO” stands for “chief operating officer,” “R.N.” for “Registered Nurse,” and “M.B.A.” for “Masters in Business Administration.” But still another question comes to mind: Why was the press release so gung-ho with putting all those confusing acronyms and position titles in a lead sentence that could hardly make its main message clear to the reader to begin with?)

OK, after so many tries, I now have at least a hazy idea that the subject of that sentence is a partnership of sorts between two entities. As to what these two entities are, however, the sentence doesn’t make clear. When the sentence says “the recent partnership of PRN Consultancy and Educational Services (PRNCES) with its COO, Lucy Babaran, R.N. , M.B.A. and Ria Sindayen, president of Perfect 9 Learning Center,” it gives the distinct impression that the partnership is between “PRN Consultancy and Educational Services,” on one hand, and “its COO, Lucy Babaran, R.N. , M.B.A. and Ria Sindayen, president of Perfect 9 Learning Center,” on the other. But we realize that it’s absurd for PRN Consultancy and Educational Services to form—I think this is a better word than to “forge”—a partnership with its own COO and the president of another company, Perfect 9 Learning Center. It’s clear, then, that the sentence bungled even the semantics of the nature of the partnership, and I will now hazard a guess that shorn of all its slipshod grammar and semantics and extraneous content, what that lead sentence really meant to say was this:

“Two educational services companies, PRN Consultancy and Educational Services (PRNCES) and Perfect 9 Learning Center, have entered into a partnership to offer a superior English-language review program in the Philippines for people intending to take the English-proficiency test administered by the IELTS (International English Language Testing System).

“The partnership agreement was signed recently by Lucy Babaran, chief operating officer of PRNCES, and Ria Sindayen, president of Perfect 9 Learning Center.”

3. A hodgepodge of unedited information in the rest of the press release

After our travails of trying to figure out what the original lead sentence was trying to say, I doubt if many of us have any energy or desire left to read further into the press-release story. Indeed, it is an even more bewildering morass of loosely composed, unedited, and unparagraphed information. Indeed, I wouldn’t even attempt to critique the grammar and semantics of the rest of the story in detail, nor even offer an improvement of its convoluted exposition. It would be so unpleasant and dumbfounding to do so, and I wouldn’t want to make Forum readers go through that experience.

4. Advice to press release writers and newspaper editors

All I want to give at this point are two pieces of advice, the first for people and companies issuing press releases, and the second to newspaper editors and section editors who make the decision whether to use or junk them.

To press release issuers: When you issue a press release, make sure that it’s clear, concise, and professionally done and that it’s English is airtight in every respect—grammar, semantics, structure, language register and all. Never make the prospective readers of your press release guess what you mean to say, and—as you can see from the example discussed here—never for a moment imagine that the newspaper’s editors will always have the competence, the patience, or the time to clarify for you the things you can’t even say clearly and properly. Always keep this in mind: It’s your job to make things clear, accurate, and readable in your press releases.

To the newspaper editors and section editors: Come on, guys! When you print press releases that are as bad in English and as incomprehensible as the one I’ve just critiqued here, don’t invoke the silly excuse that, well, it’s only a press release. As far as your readers are concerned, a press release that you decide to print in your paper becomes part and parcel of your news and feature offerings. They are your responsibility and they are a reflection not only of your editorial competence but of your newspaper as whole, so I suggest you treat them in practically the same way as your staff-generated stories. This is what good journalism is supposed to be all about, isn’t it?

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