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MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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When newspapers take excessive semantic liberties with headlines

How much journalistic license should a newspaper allow itself in its word choices for headlines?

Of course, we know that for brevity, immediacy, and drama, newspapers routinely take liberties with their English with colorful, semantically loose headlines like “Aquino won’t ax Puno yet”* (translation: “Aquino won’t relieve Puno of his position yet”), “Solons grill Malacañang honchos” (translation: “Congressmen interrogate top Malacañang officials”), and “Falcons soar to new heights” (translation: “The Falcons put in a remarkable team performance”). I’m sure you’ll all agree with me that for their attention-grabbing power, all of these three headlines are par for the course and perfectly legit.

But I do think that the following headline has crossed the borderline for semantic permissiveness:

Dacer kids sue Estrada, Lacson for $120M in US

MANILA, Philippines — The daughters of slain publicist Salvador Dacer have filed a multimillion-dollar civil suit against deposed President Joseph Estrada, fugitive Sen. Panfilo Lacson, and five other men before a United States District Court for the torture and extra-judicial killing of their father in 2000.

Carina Dacer, Sabina Dacer-Reyes, Amparo Dacer-Henson and Emily Dacer-Hungerford filed the complaint with the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco on Sept. 16 (Friday in Manila), citing the defendants’ violation of the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and the Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA).

The use of the word “kids” to describe the daughters of slain publicist Salvador Dacer is, to my mind, highly improper, belittling, and demeaning to the four women. Whether literally or figuratively, by no stretch of the imagination can the four Dacer daughters—all adults and well beyond the age range of minors—be legitimately called “kids.”

Look at how the Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines the word “kid”:

kid
1 a : a young goat  b : a young individual of various animals related to the goat
2 a : the flesh, fur, or skin of a kid  b : something made of kid
3 : a young person;  especially   : CHILD —  often used as a generalized reference to one especially younger or less experienced  <the kid on the pro golf tour>  <poor kid>

All the denotations and connotations of the word “kid” point to physical and mental immaturity as well as dearth of experience. This being the case, that thoughtlessly worded headline actually adds insult to the grave and irreparable injury already being suffered by the Dacer daughters. That headline would have been more accurate, level-headed, and considerate had it been worded this way:

Dacer daughters sue Estrada, Lacson for $120M

That’s 45 characters—with spaces—against the original 46, so the usual copy-fitting-constraint excuse can’t be invoked here to defend the degrading, semantically flawed headline that was used for the story. As to the “US” element being knocked off from the headline, I think its elimination is a fair tradeoff for accuracy and truthfulness.

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*“Aquino won’t ax Puno yet” is a particularly naughty but effective headline, playing to the hilt the imagery of the ax cutting down “Puno,” which, of course, is Tagalog for “tree.” Unlike the headline for the court suit filed by the Dacer daughters, however, the delicious wordplay in this headline in the Philippine Daily Inquirer (September 24, 2010 issue) doesn’t belittle or demean anyone.

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Nonsensical sentence in video caption (Sept. 18, 2010 Internet edition)

DYING CORAL REEFS. Bleaching affects about 80-90% of the corals on the seabed off Taytay town in Palawan. The future is bleak unless protection of the reefs from human impacts is reduced to aid recovery.

Come again? Read that second sentence and see if it makes sense at all to you: “The future is bleak unless protection of the reefs from human impacts is reduced to aid recovery.”

What is that sentence saying? That protection of the reefs should be reduced to aid in their recovery? That’s absolute nonsense, of course! No matter how we look at it, that sentence is totally absurd not only because of wrong word choices but also because of its hopelessly garbled construction.

Here’s my attempt to straighten out what that sentence really wants to tell us:

“DYING CORAL REEFS. Bleaching affects about 80-90% of the corals on the seabed off Taytay town in Palawan. The future will be bleak unless the reefs are allowed to recover by protecting them from further human impacts.”

I’m still bothered by the use of the phrase “human impacts,” which sounds like bureaucratic gobbledygook to me, but I’ll let it pass just this once.

(2) Philippine Star: Use of improper phrasal verb  

Albay’s free college education program seeks more scholars

LEGAZPI CITY, Philippines — The Albay government through its partner tertiary institutions seeks for additional scholars under its Albay Higher Education Contribution Scheme (AHECS) this second semester as over 3,000 of its 13,600 scholarship slots remain available until yesterday.

Data gathered by The STAR showed that Albay’s scholarships literally brought school dropouts, over-aged, married, abandoned, or even physically handicapped back to the classrooms, with revived hope of finishing their college education which was disrupted, primarily by lack of financial support.

In the clause “the Albay government through its partner tertiary institutions seeks for additional scholars,” it is incorrect to use the phrasal verb form “seeks for”; there’s no such phrasal verb. It’s evident that the writer or copyeditor thought that “seeks for” is an acceptable equivalent of the phrasal verb “looks for.” It isn’t. The correct usage is the verb “seek” alone, as in this rewrite of that first sentence:

“The Albay government through its partner tertiary institutions seeks additional scholars under its Albay Higher Education Contribution Scheme (AHECS) this second semester as over 3,000 of its 13,600 scholarship slots remained available until yesterday.”

An alternative is to use the phrasal verb “looks for” in its progressive form “is looking for”:

“The Albay government through its partner tertiary institutions is looking for additional scholars under its Albay Higher Education Contribution Scheme (AHECS) this second semester as over 3,000 of its 13,600 scholarship slots remained available until yesterday.”

(3) Manila Bulletin: Lack of clarity because of wordiness

Lawmaker Seeks Probe on Water Crisis

MANILA, Philippines — Citing a warning of the World Health Organization (WHO) on the precarious water situation in the country, a neophyte lawmaker sought a congressional investigation to look into the degenerating state of water sources and perennial water shortage problem and determine legislative measures to address the issues.

The lead sentence above lacks clarity because of the wordiness of the three phrases that I have underlined. The phrases “sought a congressional investigation to look into” can be more concisely stated as “asked Congress to look into,” “degenerating state of water sources and perennial water shortage problem” as “degenerating water sources and perennial water shortage,” and “determine legislative measures to address the issues” as “come up with legislation to address these problems.”

Here’s a clearer, more concise, and more straightforward rendition of that lead sentence:

“Citing a warning of the World Health Organization (WHO) about the precarious water situation in the Philippines, a neophyte lawmaker asked Congress to look into the country’s degenerating water sources and perennial water shortage and to come up with legislation to address these problems.”

(4) The Manila Times: Wrong tense for verb; wrong phrasal verb; fused or run-on sentence

Malacañang to visit Tawang relocation site

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet: Mayor Greg Abalos has announced on Tuesday that Malacañang officials would soon visit and take a look into the unfinished construction of the P25-million relocation site of the 100 families displaced by Typhoon Pepeng a year ago in Barangay Tawang of this town.

A total of 70 people died in the mudslide when the mountain slope eroded triggered by Typhoon Pepeng in 2009 in “Little Kibungan,” barangay.

  1. Wrong tense for the verb: The verb in the clause “Mayor Greg Abalos has announced on Tuesday” is in the wrong tense. Once again, we need to recall this very basic rule for tenses in English: use the simple past tense for the verb when the precise day of occurrence of the action is given, and use the present perfect when the action took place close to the present time (now) but the precise day of occurrence isn’t indicated. In this particular case, since the time of occurrence is indicated as “Tuesday,” the simple past tense is called for: “Mayor Greg Abalos announced on Tuesday.”
  2. Wrong phrasal verb: In the first sentence of the lead, the verb form “take a look into” is erroneous. The correct phrasal verb is simply “look into.”
  3. Run-on sentence: This second sentence of that lead passage is a fused or run-on sentence: “A total of 70 people died in the mudslide when the mountain slope eroded triggered by Typhoon Pepeng in 2009 in ‘Little Kibungan,’ barangay.” This is because the sentence improperly links two clauses through the fusion of the verbs “eroded” and “triggered,” thus messing up the semantics of the sentence. A major reconstruction of the sentence is needed to correct the problem.

Here’s that whole problematic passage as corrected:

Mayor Greg Abalos announced on Tuesday that Malacañang officials would soon visit and look into the unfinished construction of the P25-million relocation site of the 100 families displaced by Typhoon Pepeng a year ago in Barangay Tawang of this town.

“A total of 70 people died in the mudslide when the mountain slope in barangay Little Kibungan was eroded by Typhoon Pepeng in 2009.”

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