MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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What a big, awful difference a wrong preposition makes!

The four major Metro Manila broadsheets had been doing admirably well with their English during the past several weeks, thus giving me hardly any fodder for my usual grammar and usage critiques here. This is why my media English watch had kept its guns silent for quite a while now, a situation that I trust has been a welcome respite not only to Forum members but also to those who usually found themselves in my line of fire. This past week, however, I was constrained to do my critiques again when I found three very serious preposition misuses in two of the major broadsheets. I thought of calling attention to these errors because of the awful semantic havoc they can do to otherwise flawless journalistic prose.

Here now are those three awful preposition misuses:

(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Wrong use of the preposition “in”

In the lead sentence above, the relative clause I have underlined, “that he drop plans to bring in his Cabinet his defeated running mate,” is garbled and grammatically flawed. It doesn’t make sense and it puts the intended statement under a cloud of doubt. What caused the semantic damage to the sentence is the wrong choice of the preposition “in” in the phrase “to bring in his Cabinet his defeated running mate.” That preposition wrongly makes it appear that the President intends to bring in a physical cabinet—a piece of furniture—along with his defeated running mate. Using the preposition “into” would have conveyed the intended meaning, as we can see in the following corrected sentence:

“Saying he was no Superman, President Benigno Aquino III said Wednesday he needed former Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II as a chief troubleshooter and dismissed suggestions by some Catholic bishops that he drop plans to bring into his Cabinet his defeated running mate.”

That sentence would read even better if the direct object “his defeated running mate” is brought closer to the operative verb “bring,” as follows:

“Saying he was no Superman, President Benigno Aquino III said Wednesday he needed former Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II as a chief troubleshooter and dismissed suggestions by some Catholic bishops that he drop plans to bring his defeated running mate into his Cabinet.”

To avoid such semantic problems arising from wrong preposition usage, it’s important to remember that there are specific prepositions for indicating place and location and specific prepositions for indicating movement and direction. For indicating place and location, the prepositions “in,” “at,” and “on” are used; for indicating movement and direction, on the other hand, the prepositions of motion—“to,” “toward,” “in,” “into,” and “onto”—are used instead. The prepositions of motion connect the verbs of movement to their object destination. “Into” specifically indicates movement into an enclosed space or self-contained group, so it is the correct preposition to use—not “in”—for the movement toward the Cabinet in the sentence in question.

(2) Philippine Star: Wrong use of the preposition “between”

There’s a double-barreled grammar error in the news passage above.

In the headline itself, while the preposition “among” is correctly used in the phrase “to promote understanding, respect among youth,” the use of the collective singular noun “youth” as object of the preposition is incorrect. It should be the plural noun “youths” instead to denote young people as distinct individuals rather than as a collectivity.

In the lead sentence, on the other hand, the use of the preposition “between” in the phrase “to build understanding and respect between young people throughout the Philippines” is incorrect. As in the headline, “among” should have been used. This is to indicate that the building of understanding and respect is a reciprocal act of the young people throughout the Philippines, not just a one-to-one relationship (in which case “between” will be called for).

(3) Philippine Star: Wrong use of the preposition “to” in the phrase “resulting to”

In the lead sentence above, the phrase “resulting to the death of eight tourists from Hong Kong” glaringly misuses the preposition “to” in the phrasal verb “resulting to,” an error that I must say is so disturbingly recurrent in Philippine newspaper stories. The correct usage is, as I have repeatedly written about in my English-usage columns and in this Forum over the years, is “resulting in.”

SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:

(1) The Manila Times: Highly inappropriate language

In the lead sentence above, to describe the murder victim as having been found “swimming in his own blood” is highly charged and highly inappropriate language that doesn’t fit in with the facts. The description is absurd because it would take a lot of blood for someone to swim in it, and more so because it’s not possible for a dead person to swim. Found “bathed in his own  blood” or “soaked in his own blood” would perhaps hew to the truth more closely.

(2) Philippine Star: Tendentious, roundabout language     

The lead sentence above suffers from overly colorful, roundabout, and tendentious language that’s unsuitable for newspaper journalism. It’s not as if the policeman was unconscious or totally unaware of developments prior to finding out that he had been removed from his post and was now facing criminal and administrative cases; this is what the expression “finding himself removed from his post and facing criminal and administrative cases” strongly and incorrectly implies. On the contrary, he was removed from his post and faced criminal and administrative cases, and the following simpler sentence construction is a dispassionate, objective way to report that:

“A policeman here was removed from his post and now faces criminal and administrative cases for allegedly molesting a high school coed at a public auditorium last Jan. 15.

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