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Mop-up operation on print media’s handling of niceties of English

The good news is that the four leading Metro Manila broadsheets kept themselves free of jaw-dropping English grammar and usage errors last week, sustaining the most welcome and admirable trend for almost two months now. So, having found no grammar infractions in their major stories that would merit a full-blown critique here, I decided for a change to look more closely at how their writers and editors are coping with the niceties of English. What I’ll be doing therefore is essentially a mop-up operation on their handling of the finer points of the language—an effort that I hope will be instructive not only to the writers and editors concerned but also to Forum members and English-language learners in general.

(1) Manila Bulletin: Unsupported generalization; use of legalese; bad syntax and unjustified comparative; fuzzy language; wordiness

1. Unsupported generalization: In the lead sentence above, the prepositional phrase “despite the growing national interest in Mathematics” is an unwarranted statement with no factual support or attribution. Nothing in the rest of the story substantiates it, and as far as I know, it isn’t common knowledge either. Such a statement normally could only be made on the basis of a credible national survey of the state of mathematics learning in the Philippines, but the story doesn’t mention any. I would therefore consider that statement a glittering generality, a propaganda device or lazy writer’s tool that seeks to make readers approve and accept the statement without examining the evidence. This being the case, the best way to deal with that unsupported phrase is to simply knock it off from the sentence.
2. Use of legalese: In the same lead sentence, we find the phrase “the said subject.” Using the adjective “said” makes the statement sound like legalese, or the language used by lawyers. In news reporting, it’s always advisable to simply knock off “said” to keep the language of the story within journalistic bounds.
3. Bad syntax and unjustified comparative: In the same lead sentence, the syntax of the main clause “the said subject remains to be the most disliked for many kids” is so craggy and so wordy that it’s so difficult to figure out what is being said. When a writer says that something is most disliked by many kids, he or she is obligated to justify the use of the superlative by citing the elements used in the comparison (in this case, of course, all the other subjects disliked by kids), but this wasn’t done. Thus, nothing less than a total rewrite can fix the problem.
4. Fuzzy language: This second sentence of the lead paragraph uses fuzzy phraseology that obscures that it means to say: “Abstract concepts and dragging lessons simply do not do it for today’s children.” Precisely what does the phrase “do not do it for today’s children” mean? I don’t get it, and I’m sure many other readers don’t. Maybe the phrasal verb “turn off” can do the job better.
5. Wordiness: The second paragraph of the lead sentence is an extremely wordy sentence at 27 words. It can do the job much more clearly with only 19 words: “A study in Lapu-Lapu City even found that Mathematics is one of the reasons why children drop out of school!”  

So here’s how that lead passage might look like had that newspaper’s desk editor done a better copyediting job:

“MANILA, Philippines – Mathematics is a subject disliked by many kids. Its abstract concepts and dragging lessons simply turn them off.

“A study in Lapu-Lapu City even found that Mathematics is one of the reasons why children drop out of school!”

(40 words vs. 61 words of the original)

(2) The Philippine Star: Use of wrong verb form

In the opening sentence of the lead passage above, the adverbial phrase “instead of closing down” mangles the intended message of the statement. It gives the false impression that the TESDA itself considered the option of closing itself down, when it fact it never considered that option at all. The intended message was, of course, that TESDA intended to close down underperforming vocational schools.

The correct message would have been delivered if the pronoun “them” was provided as  direct object in that adverbial phrase so it will read as “instead of closing them down.” The semantically correct sentence will then be as follows:

“Instead of closing them down, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) has opted to extend a helping hand to technical vocational schools and institutions that failed to pass the Unified TVET Program and Accreditation System (UTPRAS).”

(3) The Philippine Star: Overly long and convoluted direct object

The first sentence of the lead passage above is actually grammar-perfect, but it is extremely difficult to read and understand because of the overly long and convoluted direct object of the verb “is urging”—the 18-word “the bicameral conference committee that will tackle possible amendments to the P1.64 trillion General Appropriations Bill for 2011.” This is a very common problem in news reporting: long noun forms as direct objects—and as subjects or doers of the action, too—that take up so many words to state completely, thus taxing the reader’s limits of comprehension. Often, the only way to fix the problem is to totally rewrite the sentence, as I’ll be doing now to that problematic lead passage above:

“MANILA, Philippines—A senior lawmaker is urging the realignment of some funds in the P1.64 trillion General Appropriations Bill for 2011 to the budget of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) to ensure regular and better technical-vocational training programs.

“Laguna Rep. Justin Marc Chipeco, a member of the House committee on accounts, made the recommendation to the bicameral conference committee tackling possible amendments to the General Appropriations Bill. Pointing to the lack of funding for the training of TESDA instructors, Chipeco said they should be attending seminars and further schooling to boost their competence and improve technical-vocational education in the country.”

(4) The Manila Times: Improper sentence construction, subject-verb disagreement, and bad phrasing; faulty construction of relative modifying clause

1. Run-on sentence construction, subject-verb disagreement, and awkward phrasing: The first sentence of the lead passage is so badly constructed and so badly phrased that the language is nearly incomprehensible. It’s a bewildering run-on sentence to begin with, fusing several clauses with improper linkages. In particular, the phrase “the number of bus operators which was blown out of proportion” is doubtful from a semantics standpoint; I have a feeling that what the writer really wanted to say is this: “the number of bus operators in Metro Manila has grown disproportionately.” Then there’s the subject-verb disagreement in the clause “why major thoroughfares of Metro Manila is considered one of the most traffic place in the world”; the antecedent operative noun of the verb form “is considered” is the plural “major thoroughfares,” so that verb form should be in the plural form “are considered,” too. Finally, the clause “why major thoroughfares of Metro Manila is considered one of the most traffic place in the world” is so clumsily worded it’s almost funny; a better phrasing would be “one of the world’s cities with the heaviest traffic in major thoroughfares.”
2. Faulty construction of relative modifying clause: In the second paragraph of the lead passage, the relative modifying clause “who had been the leader of the group who study the traffic situation in Metro Manila under the program of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)” is improperly and awkwardly constructed. Its use of the modifying clause “who had been the leader of the group...” is semantically faulty in using the past perfect tense; I suspect what was meant was simply “former leader.” And of course, its use of the relative pronoun “who” for the antecedent “group” is grammatically wrong; it should be “that” instead. Finally, the predicate of the main clause, “that the existing law on traffic is not being implemented after the former strongman; President Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown from power,” is in the wrong tense; the verb form shouldn’t be in the present-tense “is not being implemented” but in the past-tense “was no longer implemented.”

Here then is that lead passage as totally revised taking all the above fixes into account:

“The number of bus operators in Metro Manila has grown disproportionately and this is one of the many reasons why it is one of the world’s cities with the heaviest traffic in major thoroughfares, an international study revealed.

“Engineer Rene Santiago, former leader of the group studying the Metro Manila traffic situation under a program sponsored by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), said that the existing law on traffic was no longer implemented after former strongman President Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown from power.”

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