MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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To say “coeds from exclusive girls’ schools” a contradiction in terms

I am delighted to report that the four major Metro Manila broadsheets continued to keep the English of their major stories free of major grammar and usage errors during the past week. It’s evident that their writers and editors are now taking a much tighter rein on their English, a development that, of course, makes critiquing their journalistic output a much easier task for me. In fact, I found only one fly in the ointment, so to speak—a spectacularly wrong word choice in a feature story in one of the broadsheets last October 20. This is actually not the first time I encountered the flawed word choice, “coed,” and I’m pretty sure that many of you have had the same experience. This should therefore be a good opportunity to correct once and for all the apparently widespread wrong perception of what the term “coed” means.

Here’s the feature story in the Manila Bulletin last October 20:

1. A serious contradiction of terms

I would say that the feature story is competently written, with an engaging narrative that flows quite well. The problem, though, is that its lead sentence harbors a fatal semantic error. The phrase “coeds from exclusive girls’ schools” is a serious contradiction in terms.       

The fact is that coeds can’t logically be students of exclusive girls’ schools. The word “coed” is short for “coeducational student,” which means “a female student in a coeducational institution.” In turn, a coeducational institution is one where students of both sexes can enroll and study. It is therefore semantically erroneous to call students from exclusive girls’ schools “coeds.” Indeed, what should be called “coeds” are students from coeducational schools. Logically, a “coed” could even be either female or male, but in actual usage, the term “coed” has come to be limited in sense to “a female student at a coeducational college or university.”

I thus wonder why many journalists and writers in general have come to think of “coeds” in terms of its exact opposite meaning—that they are females studying in exclusive girls’ schools. They are obviously perpetuating a mistake committed by some English grammar authority in recent years. In any case, it’s not too late for them to rectify the misconception, in the same way that I am now correcting the fatal error in that problematic lead paragraph by rewriting it as follows:

“Not too long ago, young women from exclusive girls’ schools would just keep to themselves. Called colegialas, they were cooped up in their own little world, mostly made up of elite social affairs, without caring much for what was happening outside the convent walls or beyond their fancy soirees.”

2. Unnecessary hyphenation of a compound word

You must have noticed that in the second paragraph of the original passage, I underlined the phrase “socially-aware and empowered young woman.” I did so to call attention to the fact that when an adjective is modified by an adverb ending in “-ly,” the compounded words shouldn’t be hyphenated. That phrase should therefore be written simply as “socially aware and empowered young woman.” It’s different when the adjective ends not in “-ly,” as in “good” in “good-looking actor”; this time the hyphen is absolutely necessary to indicate that in that compound word, “good-looking” is modifying the noun “actor,” not “good” modifying the phrase “looking actor.”

3. Wrong preposition usage

In the third paragraph of the original passage, the phrase “vocal of their stand” uses the wrong preposition “of.” The correct preposition is “in,” so that phrase should read as “vocal in their stand.”

FORUM READER’S FEEDBACK ON MEDIA REPORTING:

I received the e-mail below from Mr. Juanito T. Fuerte, a longtime US resident who recently came back to the Philippines for good as a balikbayan:

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