Jose Carillo's English Forum - Essays by Jose Carillo

ESSAYS BY JOSE CARILLO

On this webpage, Jose A. Carillo shares with English users, learners, and teachers a representative selection of his essays on the English language, particularly on its uses and misuses. One essay will be featured every week, and previously featured essays will be archived in the forum.

The need to avoid officious stock phrases when writing or speaking

Let’s face it: Bureaucrats, lawyers, and not a few academicians use a lot of officious stock phrases in both their written and spoken communication, among them “by virtue of,” “with reference to,” “in connection with,” “with regard to,” “in order to,” “with respect to,” “in line with,” and—perhaps the most irksome of them all—“this is to inform you that” for both bad and good news and everything in between. These phrases make their English sound so highhanded and even somewhat threatening, but we learn to tolerate them because they are actually part of their professional jargon.

The problem, however, is that through our repeated exposure to these stock phrases, they eventually creep into our own writing and speech without our even knowing it. Indeed, not a few of us in time begin to sound like bureaucrats, lawyers, and academicians ourselves even if we are not. We routinely appropriate their jargon not only in our conversations with our friends and coworkers but also in our job applications as well as in our own memos, letters, and reports.

But should we really allow tradition and peer-group pressure to tyrannize us into making these officious stock phrases part of our own language? In business and in our personal lives, is it really not advisable and not desirable to speak in more concise, more pleasant, and friendlier English?

My answer to both questions is, of course, a big “No!” We should shun those officious stock phrases and avoid them like the plague. As I explained in the essay below that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in 2004, we should always use the most concise and most forthright but friendly English phrases that can precisely convey our meaning. Indeed, our best bet for getting along with people and getting things done in the workplace and most everywhere else is not bureaucratic, lawyerly, or academic language but plain and simple English. (July 31, 2010)

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Phrases desirable and abstruse

We are going back to some grammar basics today because of an interesting e-mail that I received from a reader, Mr. Dante Quiba of Vallejo, California, who asked for my thoughts on certain words that were bugging him. He wondered which of them were advisable to use and which might have already fallen into disuse. They are “about,” “regarding,” “concerning,” “touching on,” “in terms of,” and “on account of.” I guess my answer to Dante will be of interest to all users and learners of English, so I am devoting this essay entirely to it.

As we know, the words Dante was asking about are very commonly used prepositions or prepositional phrases. They are those handy grammar devices in the English language that refer to things or relate them to one another. All of the six that Dante mentioned are, of course, still very much in use these days. The first four actually mean the same thing: “in connection with” or “on the subject of.” The shortest of them, “about,” is also the most natural and most forceful. It is arguably our best choice for informal statements that need to refer to something: “About our agreement last night, put it on hold until next week. I have second thoughts about some of the provisions.”

“Regarding” and “concerning” have a mildly officious and legalistic undertone, but if that doesn’t bother us, we can use them freely in place of “about.” Feel how they sound: “Regarding your application for a loan, you may expect release in two weeks.” “We are writing concerning your daughter’s academic performance.” On the other hand, the phrase “touching on” is of very limited use, appropriate only in constructions like these two: “Touching on the subject of romance, he became a spellbinding speaker.” “It will help if you touch on the subject of overtime pay in your briefing.” By some quirk of the language, “touch on” seems to work only when it latches on to the phrase “the subject of.” We thus must avoid it if we can.

“In terms of” (which means “considering”) and “on account of” (“because”) are also respectable—if a bit officious—prepositional phrases: “A time deposit is superior to a savings deposit in terms of interest income.” “We canceled the games on account of the inclement weather.” We must also note here that “in view of,” “owing to,” and “due to” can very well take the place of “on account of” in that second sentence; the choice really depends on what we do for a living and the company we keep. (Lawyers gravitate to “in view of” for their own reasons, but if you ask a non-lawyer like me, I’d much prefer to use “due to” most of the time.)

More prepositional phrases abound that mean the same thing as “about,” but we are well advised to stay away from them. They are abstruse and can give our prose a false, awkward tone, particularly these five: “in accordance with,” “in connection with,” “in conformance to,” “by reason of,” and “as to.” Two really obsolete ones, “apropos of” and “anent,” are best avoided altogether.

Then there are scores more of prepositional phrases that are too long-winded and legalistic for comfort; we should make it a point of honor to always replace them with their more concise equivalents. Here are some of them with their no-nonsense counterparts: “at such time” (“when”), “at that point in time” (“then,” “now”), “by means of” (“by”), “by virtue of” (“by,” “under”), “despite the fact that” (“although”),“due to the fact that” (“because”), “during the course of,” “in the course of” (“during”), “for the amount of” (“for”), “for the purpose of” (“for,” “under”), “from the point of view of” (“from,” “for”), “in order to” (“to”), “in a manner similar to” (“like”), “in excess of” (“more than,” “over”), “in favor of” (“for”), “in relation to” (“about,” “concerning”), “in the nature of” (“like”), “in the immediate vicinity of” (“near”), “in close proximity to” (“near”), “in the present” (“now”), “on one occasion” (“once”), “on the basis of” (“by,” “from”), “subsequent to” (“after”), “until such time as” (“until”), “with a view to” (“to”), “with reference to” (“about,” “concerning”), “with regard to” (“about,” “concerning”), and “with respect to” (“about,” “concerning”).

And while we are at it, we should also mercilessly eliminate from our personal and official correspondence the following prepositional clichés on sight: “acknowledge receipt of,” “it has come to my attention,” “at this writing,” “attached thereto,” “receipt is hereby acknowledged,” “please be advised that,” “enclosed herewith,” “thank you in advance,” and—as I suggested avoiding in an earlier column—“more power to you!”

If there’s one rule we should live by in the use of prepositional phrases, it is to choose the most concise and most forthright but friendly ones that can precisely convey our meaning. (March 15, 2004)

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Previously Featured Essay:

When verbs assume non-finite forms

A reader, Ms. Clara Tong, e-mailed me last week after coming across a long-ago column of mine extolling the virtues of the absolute phrase. She said: “My question may sound strange, but I certainly hope you can answer it. I discovered your article today through Google and I enjoyed it immensely. I can’t agree with you more when you said that ‘a major virtue of absolute phrases is that they can neatly and efficiently wrap telling details into sentences.’ But in that column, you made a reference to a ‘true finite verb.’ What did you mean by that?”

Going over that column again, I saw at once what had mystified Clara. But let me backtrack a little to put my answer in better perspective. In that column, I described the absolute phrase as a unique grammatical form that consists of a participle and a noun or pronoun that it modifies. I pointed out that unlike the other kinds of phrases, an absolute phrase does not directly connect to the rest of the sentence or modify a specific word in that sentence; instead, it functions as an independent parenthetical element modifying the whole sentence: “Her heart brimming with joy, the winner extended a reconciliatory arm to her political enemies.” “Their egos stung by defeat, the losers vowed never to concede.” “The bitterly fought election [being] over, the nation braced itself for the tough times ahead.” The absolute phrase can neatly give a sentence context and texture, but it can be knocked off and the sentence can still stand by itself.

Another distinguishing feature of an absolute phrase, I observed in that column, is that it contains a subject (“her heart,” “their egos,” and “the bitterly fought election” in the sentences above) but not a true finite verb. Instead of a finite verb, I said, it uses a participle (“brimming with joy,” “stung by defeat,” “being over”) to modify that subject. The problem is that I did not elaborate on what a “finite verb” and a “non-finite verb” were. Only after reading Clara’s e-mail, in fact, did I realize that I should have made a clear distinction between them.

So, better late than never, I am doing so now.

A “verb,” as we all know, is a word that serves as the grammatical center of a predicate and expresses an act, occurrence, or state of being. It is “finite” if it actually shows tense (past, present, or future), person (first person, second person, or third person), and number (singular or plural). Here are sentences that use finite verb forms expressing an act or occurrence: “I run.” “He runs.” “We ran.” And here are sentences that use different forms of the linking verb “be” to express a state of being: “I am hungry.” “She was hungry.” “They were hungry.” All of these verbs have duration, meaning that they happen at some point in time, and they change in form (inflect) depending on tense, person, and number; in short, they are functioning as “true” verbs.

In contrast, a verb becomes “non-finite” when it assumes a form that has no duration and cannot take tense, person, and number. We can liken “non-finite verbs” to actions that congealed as they were taking place, as in a freeze-framed scene from a movie. They become what are known in grammar as the verbals. The verb “take,” for instance, can assume the non-finite forms “to take” (infinitive), “taking” (gerund), and “taken” (participle)—forms that no longer function as verbs but serve as nouns or adjectives instead.

Let’s look closer at how these non-finite verbs work. As an infinitive phrase (noun): “To take her hand would not be advisable.” “I have never wanted to take her place.” Gerund phrase (noun): “Taking her hand would not be advisable.” “I have never considered taking her place.” Past or present participle (adjective): “The taken seat was the cause of their quarrel.” “Taking seats without permission is impolite.”

Now I am ready to answer Clara’s question about what I meant by “true finite verb.” In my column on absolute phrases, I used the qualifier “true” for “finite verbs” because it so happens that in English, one of the verb forms—the one that ends with the suffix –ing—can either be a “true” finite verb or a non-finite one depending on how it is used. It is a true finite verb when used in the progressive tense, as in “She is bluffing about the whole thing.” It is not a true finite verb but a non-finite verb when used as a gerund, as in “Bluffing is her forte.” In fact, we can only be sure that a verb form ending in –ing is a finite verb—is “true”—and not a non-finite verb by checking if it really works as a verb in a sentence. (July 5, 2004)

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