MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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Problems with overwriting, slipshod editing of newspaper stories

The four major Metro Manila broadsheets were relatively free of serious grammar errors in their major stories during the past few days, so I’ll take this opportunity to look into the matter of overwriting and the less-than-impeccable editing of some of their lesser stories.

(1) Manila Bulletin: Florid overwriting; subject-verb agreement error

I am an advocate of creative writing, but I think writers should learn how to make a clear distinction between creative writing and florid overwriting. I’d say that the lead statement of the feature story above is too overstated and too overblown, and that its word choices are too flowery and border on outright exaggeration. And, from a more practical standpoint, it uses as many as 60 words for what could be said more precisely in 15 or so.

In particular, in the first sentence of the passage, the phrase “Philippines’ culinary heritage” strikes me as a bloated term for “Philippine cuisine” or “Philippine dishes”; the phrase “inherent penchant” strikes me as an overstatement of the plain word “liking” (“penchant,” even if an iffy fancy word, might have served the purpose but modifying it with “inherent” ruins the idea, for the “inherent” aspect is actually already subsumed by the definition of penchant as “a strong and continued inclination,” which, of course, means an “inherent attribute”); the phrase “creating dishes that distinctly personifies our diverse cultural backgrounds” seems to me too presumptuous and gratuitous a statement to be true (chefs and cooks, no matter how nationalistic and cultured, simply don’t create dishes to personify cultural diversity; they do so to please the palate).

As to the second sentence of the passage, I take issue with its use of adverb “patently” to modify the verb “influenced” (frankly, I can’t find a definition of “patently” anywhere that would justify its use in that sense), and I similarly take issue with its use of the adverb “truly” to modify the verb phrase “stand out” (as it is, “stand out” is emphasis enough). I also question the logic of the author’s making a distinction between “our cuisine [that] has been patently influenced by colonizers” and the “homegrown specialties that have been passed down from one generation to another.” For all we know, some of these cuisines and the supposedly homegrown specialties the author refers to could be one and the same thing—or at least there could be some overlapping between them.

Then, of course, there’s the very basic subject-verb agreement error in the phrase “inherent penchant for creating dishes that distinctly personifies our diverse cultural backgrounds.” Since “dishes” is plural, the singular verb-form “personifies” that refers to it should be the plural form “personify” instead.

So here’s how I would think that bloated passage might be boiled down to size and to its precise essence:

“One homegrown specialty that stands out in Philippine cuisine is La Paz Batchoy of the Ilonggos.”

(2) Manila Bulletin: Overwriting and profound wordiness

One of the earliest things I learned in newspaper journalism is to get rid of such redundant prepositional phrases as “in an effort to,” “in line with,” “in connection with,” and “in consonance with.” In practically all cases, they are needless because they just add verbiage but contribute nothing semantically significant to the statement. When we purge a sentence of such useless prepositional phrases, so many other needless words that usually accompany them normally can also be dropped. The sentence can then be recast into a much more concise statement.

We’ll do that now to the extremely wordy passage above:

“The Climate Change Commission (CCC) will sign an agreement with the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) by the end of the month to promote climate change mitigation measures in all levels of governance.

“According to CCC vice chairman Secretary Heherson Alvarez, he will sign the memorandum of understanding with the DILG and the Albay provincial government through its Centre for Initiatives and Research in Climate Change Adaptation (CIRCA).”
(From 87 words to 70 words, or savings of 17 words)

(3) The Manila Times: Overwriting and convoluted sentence construction

Like the writing in Item 2 above, this news story also falls prey to profound wordiness because of its use of the redundant prepositional phrase “in pursuit of” to lead off its first sentence. That first sentence can actually be made much more concise by knocking off the entire phrase “In pursuit of saving and,” then by starting off the sentence with the infinitive phrase “to preserve.”

Also, the second sentence of the passage is extremely convoluted because its lumping of so many names and designations gets in the way of the description of the Albay Circa official’s request to be flown to the place where the dead whale was found. A major rewrite is needed to fix the problem.

With the two suggested fixes above, that problematic passage can be boiled down to this more concise and more readable version:

“To preserve the carcass of the 25-ton sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) that was swept ashore at Carogcog village here because of Typhoon Basyang, the Center for Initiative on Climate Adaptation (Circa) official has ordered its burning to be immediately stopped.”

“Manuel ‘Nong’ Rangasa, Albay Circa executive director, also requested to be flown to Rapu-Rapu along with The Manila Times correspondent to personally inspect the dead sperm whale that was adrift within Carogcog village, a boat ride of some 15 minutes from the poblacion. He made the request through Air Force Col. Guillermo Molina, commander of Technical Operations Group-Philippine Air Force-Bicol, and director Bernardo “Raffy” Alejandro of the Office of Civil Defense.”  

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:   

(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer: A questionable analogy

I’m not sure if the analogy of “a broken Maynilad pipe” to an “oasis” is semantically appropriate here; at the very least, the imagery doesn’t seem right at all. Sure, aside from its main definition of “a fertile or green area in an arid region (as a desert),” the noun “oasis” also figuratively means “something that provides refuge, relief, or pleasant contrast.” I submit, though, that more precisely, it was the gushing water from the broken pipe that might have looked “like an oasis” rather than the broken pipe itself.

So probably that lead sentence would read much better if rewritten this way:

“Like an oasis, the gushing water from a broken Maynilad pipe on a road in Malabon City attracted dozens and dozens of residents desperate for a bath after nearly a week without water.”

(2) The Manila Times: Wrong word usage

The first sentence of the lead passage above suffers from three wrongly phrased expressions. The first, “making good to his promise” should be “making good his promise” without the preposition “to.” The second, “and barely a month into office,” shouldn’t have the conjunction “and” to be correct, and “into” should be the preposition “in” instead. And the third, “has issued his first order,” gives the wrong impression that he would be giving several orders to freeze all small-scale mining and quarrying operations in the province; to be semantically correct, it should be rephrased to “made it his first official order.”

Here then is that lead sentence as corrected:

“Making good his promise barely a month in office, Gov. Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. of Zambales has made it his first official order to freeze all small-scale mining and quarrying operations in the province.”

(3) Manila Bulletin: Use of wrong verb tense; use of wrong preposition

This rule is something so basic in English grammar, so it’s really a wonder why some writers keep on committing the same mistake in its usage: When the date or day of occurrence of an action is given, that action should be rendered in the simple past tense, not in the present perfect (and neither in the past perfect). So, in the first sentence of the lead passage above, since the date “July 12” is specified, the verb should be the simple past “launched” instead of “have launched.”

Also, because of the use of the wrong preposition “of” in the phrase “a model of the bamboo tree industry in the country,” the wrong idea is created that Pampanga is aiming to be “a model of the bamboo industry.” The correct idea is, of course, that it’s aiming to be “a model for the bamboo industry” or, even more accurately, “a model for the development of the bamboo industry.”

That first sentence should then be corrected as follows:

“The local provincial government and several non-government organizations in the province launched a massive bamboo tree-planting program last July 12 to make the province a model for the development of the bamboo tree industry in the country.”

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