MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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When a big news story is ruined by terribly disjointed writing

A cardinal rule in written composition is that its sentences must form a logical and cohesive train of ideas. Each sentence afer the first need to be grammatically and semantically linked to the sentence that precedes and follows it, such that the narrative or exposition flows and builds up to an orderly and unified whole. When the writer fails to do this, the composition becomes disjointed, incoherent, and confusing even if all of its sentences are grammar-perfect and clearly written.

This is precisely what happened to this otherwise very newsworthy headline story:

Philippine Daily Inquirer: Hodgepodge of unconnected sentences

The problem with the first three sentences of the news story above is obvious: they are functionally disconnected from one another. There has been hardly any effort to indicate the logical, space, and time relations between each sentence. The story begins with President Aquino beginning a promised crackdown on tax evaders, suddenly shifts to sometime in the past to tell us that a pawnshop owner declared zero income even as he acquired a P26-million Lamborghini sports car, then goes back to the present to focus on that person as having been named in a tax evasion case filed by the BIR. In short, an account of at least six separate, distinct events were unceremoniously dumped before us with hardly any effort on the part of the writer and of the editors to logically connect those events and make sense of them for us.

Even granting that the writer hasn’t mastered yet the art of establishing meaning with the appropriate connectives or linking devices, desk people and editors are expected to routinely supply those connectives to ensure the clarity and coherence of published stories. That procedure obviously wasn’t observed in this particular case, however. For illustrative purposes, therefore, I will now attempt to supply those connectives to make the disjointed narrative above cohere and make sense:

“President Benigno Aquino III’s promised crackdown on tax evaders began Thursday, with the Bureau of Internal Revenue filing a tax evasion case against the owner of a popular pawnshop chain who declared zero income in the year that he acquired a P26-million Lamborghini sports car.

“Named in the tax evasion case was William R. Villarica, sole proprietor of W Villarica Pawnshop. The BIR filed the case with the Department of Justice to start off Mr. Aquino’s drive to raise revenues in lieu of imposing taxes to cover a whopping P325-billion deficit that could put a damper on efforts to stimulate the economy.”

Admittedly, the connectives I used above—they are the underlined phrases I added to link the ideas in the original three-sentence passage—are more complex than the usual off-the-rack connectives, but I decided to use them here to demonstrate how well-thought-out connectives can work to clearly establish relationships between ideas and sentences. In general, however, the most basic connectives usually will do. They are, of course, the prepositions, the coordinating conjunctions, the subordinating conjunctions, or the conjunctive adverbs—the very same function words that we routinely use to string up clauses into compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences so we can achieve the precise meaning or nuance we want for our sentences and compositions. It would be great if reporters and editors of the major Metro Manila broadsheets could find time to study them more closely as tools for achieving stronger coherence and logic in their news and feature stories as well as in their commentaries.

Now, simply for comparison, let’s do another rewrite of the problematic passage, this time using only basic connectives and transitional devices:

“President Benigno Aquino III’s promised crackdown on tax evaders began Thursday with the filing of a tax evasion case against the owner of a popular pawnshop chain who declared zero income in the year that he acquired a P26-million Lamborghini sports car.

“The Bureau of Internal Revenue filed the case with the Department of Justice against William R. Villarica, sole proprietor of W Villarica Pawnshop, marking the start of Mr. Aquino’s drive to raise revenues in lieu of imposing taxes to cover a whopping P325-billion deficit that could put a damper on efforts to stimulate the economy.”

The first connective above, “with the filing of a tax evasion case,” is simply a prepositional phrase, while the second, “marking the start,” uses the progressive form of the verb as a transitional and linking device for an extended modifying phrase.

Of course, for those uncomfortable with complex sentences, we can further simplify the second paragraph by spinning off the modifying phrase “marking the start of Mr. Aquino’s drive to raise revenues…” into a separate sentence:

“The Bureau of Internal Revenue filed the case with the Department of Justice against William R. Villarica, sole proprietor of W Villarica Pawnshop. This action marked the the start of Mr. Aquino’s drive to raise revenues in lieu of imposing taxes to cover a whopping P325-billion deficit that could put a damper on efforts to stimulate the economy.”

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:   

(1) Manila Bulletin: Wrong word usage

Even by the greatest stretch, I don’t think that the transitive verb “scour” is descriptive of what the boy, the girl, and the dog are doing in that picture. This much is obvious from the definitions below of “scour” from my Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary. “Walk along the shoreline,” “comb the shoreline,” or “inspect the shoreline” perhaps?

scour
transitive verb 
1 a : to rub hard especially with a rough material for cleansing  b : to remove by rubbing hard and washing
2 archaic   : to clear (a region) of enemies or outlaws
3 : to clean by purging  : PURGE
4 : to remove dirt and debris from (as a pipe or ditch)
5 : to free from foreign matter or impurities by or as if by washing  *scour wool*
6 : to clear, dig, or remove by or as if by a powerful current of water

(2) The Manila Times: Bad sentence construction twice in a row; wrong preposition; missing article “the”

As a matter of style, the noun phrase “the people of Cordilleras” needs the article “the” before “Cordilleras,” so it should read as follows: “the people of the Cordilleras.” Then the form “to be alert and expect more rains and typhoons” sounds awkward—it’s also an unparallel construction—because it compounds the infinitive of the passive form of the verb “alert” and the infinitive of the active form verb “expect.” A simple fix is to consider them as separate infinitives, in which case another “to” needs to be added before “expect,” as follows: “to be alert and to expect more rains and typhoons.” Also, the preposition “on” in “on mid-August” is wrong; it should be “in.”

The second sentence of the news story is also defective in two ways. First, the use of the “claiming” strongly suggests that what the weather agency is saying isn’t very credible; “saying” is a fairer, more level-headed verb to use. Second, the use of the progressive tense form “claiming” is structurally defective without a comma to set off the modifying phrase that it introduces. Even with the comma fix, though, it’s much better to convert that modifying phrase into the nonrestrictive form “which claimed [to be replaced with “said,” as earlier pointed out] that the country is now in transition from El Niño to La Niña [Phenomenon].”

So here is the entire passage as corrected:

“The Regional Disaster Coordinating Council (RDCC) warned the people of the Cordilleras to be alert and to expect more rains and typhoons in mid-August with the coming of the La Niña phenomenon.

“This was based on the forecast of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa), which said that the country is now in transition from El Niño to La Niña.”

(3) Manila Bulletin: Use of wrong tense; awkward phrasing with day of occurrence; awkward use of possessive form

In the first sentence, since the day when the assurance was given is specified, the verb shouldn’t be in the present perfect “has assured” but in the simple past tense “assured” instead. Also, the phrase “has assured Thursday foreign investors” is extremely awkward because the noun “Thursday” blocks the action of the verb “assured” on its true object, “foreign investors,” thus erroneously making it appear that it’s the noun “Thursday” that receives the action.

In the second sentence, the ill-advised use of the possessive form “province’s” makes the sentence sound badly; it’s better to use the possessive form “of the province” instead after “partners”

So here’s that problematic passage as corrected:

“Governor Amado T. Espino Jr. assured foreign investors on Thursday that his constituents are respectful and supportive of businesses that help boost the province’s economy and tourism.

“In the latest development in local trade, Espino cited the Korean firm JJGPK Co. Ltd., headed by Mr. Kang Hee Jung, as one of the most promising partners of the province.”

(4) Manila Bulletin: Ruinous absence of the preposition “at”

We should never underestimate the power of the preposition. Without “at” after the verb “marched” in the first sentence of the story above, we have the fantastic spectacle of the first-person narrator marching the UP Los Banos grounds instead on marching “at” it!

See how the preposition “at” quickly fixes that problem:

“As I blissfully marched at the University of the Philippines Los Baños grounds amid the rain, I felt excitement and anticipation that soon, I would be part of the labor force.”

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