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Dealing with print media’s pesky conjunction, preposition misuses

The four major Metro Manila broadsheets again admirably kept the English of their major stories free of serious grammar and usage errors last week, sustaining a trend of more disciplined writing and tighter editing for over a month now. I therefore find it a good time to zero in on their frequent pesky conjunction and preposition misuses that I often ignore when I’m confronted by their more flagrant grammar errors.

Let’s dissect the erroneous and illogical use of the preposition “as” by two of the broadsheets in three of their news stories last October 29:

(1) Philippine Star: Misuse of the conjunction “as” to indicate simultaneity of action

The lead sentence above is grammatically and logically flawed because it uses the wrong subordinating conjunction—“as”—to link the subordinate clause to the main clause. The main clause is, of course, “the annual fiesta of Cagayan’s Amulung town this week takes a somber note,” while the subordinate clause is “robbers took the ivory head and hands of the centuries-old image of Our Lady of Victories, one of the province’s patron saints, last weekend.” By using “as” as subordinating conjunction, the sentence conveys the false sense that the action in the main clause—the annual fiesta taking a somber note—took place simultaneously with the action in the subordinate clause—the stealing of the ivory head and hands of the statue of the patron saint. The fact, though, is that the two actions took place several days apart. The theft of the statue’s parts happened during the weekend, while the fiesta’s taking a somber note is in the present, so the sense of simultaneity evoked by “as” is wrong and uncalled for.

What then should the proper subordinating conjunction be in this case?

The logical choice for subordinating conjunction here is “because,” but let’s see if the sentence will work properly if we replace “as” with it:

“The annual fiesta of Cagayan’s Amulung town this week takes a somber note because robbers took the ivory head and hands of the centuries-old image of Our Lady of Victories, one of the province’s patron saints, last weekend.”

There’s logic in the statement now but it still sounds grammatically craggy. This is because the main clause isn’t in the proper tense; the fiesta’s taking of a somber note wasn’t an instantaneous and fleeting action but a sustained action over a whole week, so the correct tense to establish this situation is the present perfect “has taken.” Also, the semantics of the sentence would greatly improve if the imprecise verb “took” is replaced with “stole.”

The sentence will then read as follows:

“The annual fiesta of Cagayan’s Amulung town this week has taken a somber note because robbers stole the ivory head and hands of the centuries-old image of Our Lady of Victories, one of the province’s patron saints, last weekend.”

An alternative construction is to use the past tense for the main clause and to use the subordinating conjunction “after” to link the subordinate clause to it, as follows:

“The annual fiesta of Cagayan’s Amulung town this week took a somber note after robbers stole the ivory head and hands of the centuries-old image of Our Lady of Victories, one of the province’s patron saints, last weekend.”

We can make the sentence above even more grammatically and semantically sound by nominalizing the stealing of the parts of the patron saint’s statue—a sometimes useful grammatical procedure that converts verbs into nouns (“stole” to “theft” in this case):

“The annual fiesta of Cagayan’s Amulung town this week took a somber note after the  theft of the ivory head and hands of the centuries-old image of Our Lady of Victories, one of the province’s patron saints, last weekend.”

(2) Manila Bulletin: Confusing use of the subordinating conjunction “as”; erroneous use of the possessive form; wrong tense for the verb

(a) Confusing use of the subordinating conjunction “as”: The lead sentence of the news story above is in serious grammatical and semantic trouble. It misuses the subordinating “as” to give the absurd impression that the provincial government’s “eyeing close to P300 million in investments next year” is the cause of Camiguin’s continuing to experience an economic boom. On the contrary, the provincial government’s expectation of more investments next year is more logically the result of Camiguin’s continued economic boom. The sentence will yield this correct sense if “as” is replaced by “so” preceded by a comma, and the word “more” is added after “P300 million” in the subordinate clause, as follows:

“Camiguin province continues to experience an economic boom, so the provincial government is eyeing close to P300 million more in investments next year, officials said Thursday.”

It can be argued, of course, that the provincial government’s expectation of more investments next year isn’t a direct result of the economic boom but simply a reaction or response to that economic boom—something that, of course, can be verified with the Camiguin provincial government. If the latter is the case, though, that sentence needs to use the preposition “with” instead of the conjunction “so” to yield the correct sense:

“Camiguin province continues to experience an economic boom, with the provincial government eyeing close to P300 million more in investments next year, officials said Thursday.”

(b) Erroneous use of the possessive form: In the second sentence of the lead passage, the possessive “insurgents’ free” in the subordinate clause “because it is insurgents’ free” is in the wrong form. The grammatically correct form is “insurgent-free” (it was this correct form, in fact, that was used in the story’s headline), but semantically, a much more appropriate construction of that subordinate clause is “because it is insurgency-free.” This means that the province isn’t experiencing insurgency as a major problem—not, as the modifier “insurgent-free” implies, that it doesn’t have a single insurgent to contend with.

(c) Wrong tense for the verb: In the third paragraph of the lead passage, the verb in the clause “the tourism industry also experience a boom in the province last year” should be in the past tense “experienced” instead. This was probably a proofreading error, of course, so we will leave the matter at that.

(3) Manila Bulletin: Misuse of the conjunction “as” that creates an absurd run-on sentence; extremely convoluted front-end modifier

As it is in the same league as the problems with “as” in the preceding two items, I’d like to dissect the misuse of the conjunction “as” first even if it occurs later than the extremely convoluted front-end modifier in the above lead passage. This way, we can lump all three problematic “as” usages together and put closure to the subject before proceeding to the matter of problematic front-end modifiers.

(a) Misuse of the conjunction “as” that creates an absurd run-on sentence: In the second paragraph, the wrong use of the subordinating conjunction “as” makes the attribution of the direct quote a run-on statement that illogically connects and mixes up ideas. The result is a grammatically and semantically bizarre statement that has no bearing on reality.

Although the syntax problem is fatal to the sentence, it is actually amenable to a simple fix: just get rid of the “as” and find some grammatical device to logically link the attribution to the remainder of the sentence.

Here’s how I would fix that sentence into something comprehensible:

“It has been a fruitful 100 days,” Alarva said, recalling how she managed to tap her district’s main concerns and provided solutions to long-standing problems that had been neglected.

Note that the fix above involves the use of a comma after the word “said” to effectively punctuate the attribution, then the use of a verb in the progressive form (“recalling”) to correlate the remainder of the sentence with the quoted statement.

(b) Extremely convoluted front-end modifier: Now, going back to the first sentence of the lead passage, we find this curious and longwinded front-end phrase modifying the proper noun: “sexy comedienne-turned-Laguna 3rd District Board Member Angelica Jones Alarva.” Apart from the questionable taste in using the “sexy comedienne” background of the public official in the modifier, the use of a very longwinded front-end modifier like this is a big no-no in English sentence construction. This is because it overtaxes the reader’s brain before it can make heads and tails of the convoluted noun phrase.

So here’s a socially more circumspect and grammatically airtight construction that I propose for that highly problematic sentence:

“The first 100 days in office of Board Member Angelica Jones Alarva of the Laguna 3rd District have been marked by a number of projects centered on the welfare of the youth and families.

“It has been a fruitful 100 days,” Alarva, a former sexy comedienne who went into politics, said as she recalled how she managed to tap her district’s main concerns and provided solutions to long-standing problems that had been neglected.
 
SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Erroneous pluralization of “attempted murder”

I hope that it’s just a proofreading oversight, but in the lead passage above, the use of the plural noun “murders” in the phrase “a criminal complaint for multiple frustrated and multiple attempted murders” is erroneous. The use of the adjective “multiple” already does the job of pluralizing the term “multiple attempted murder,” so affixing the “s” to “murder” is unnecessary and uncalled for.

(2) Manila Bulletin: Extremely long and intimidating sentence constructions

At 70 words, the first sentence in the lead passage above is much too long, too complicated, and too difficult to understand, so I’m sure that many readers were terrified into not reading it at first sight. The 45-word second sentence is only half as long but it makes for difficult and tedious reading as well.

My advice to news reporters and their editors is to serve the news in simpler, shorter, and less intimidating ways, like this proposed rewrite of the passage:

“BAGUIO CITY—A local environmentalist group here has stepped up its campaign to protect the Busol watershed, the city’s main source of water, from the massive intrusion being done there by unscrupulous individuals.

“The Baguio Regreening Movement (BRM) said the intruders are taking advantage of a recent injunction issued by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) that undermined a Supreme Court (SC) ruling upholding the demolition of illegal structures in the watershed area.

“Meanwhile, the Busol task force requested the city government here to issue the necessary demolition orders to mushrooming structures within the restricted places of the watershed. This is to prevent other individuals from setting up structures in the area.”

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