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21
Site Announcements / Playlist Update (February 22-28, 2025) of Jose Carillo Forum's Facebook Gateway
« Last post by Joe Carillo on February 26, 2025, 06:54:40 PM »
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR FEBRUARY 22 - 28, 2025 OF JOSE CARILLO ENGLISH FORUM’S FACEBOOK GATEWAY

Simply click the web links to the 15 featured English grammar refreshers and general interest stories this week along with selected postings published in the Forum in previous years:

1. Getting To Know English: “Using inversion for even stronger emphasis”



2. Use and Misuse: “Can we use the American word ‘thru’ and British word ‘through’ interchangeably?”


IMAGE CREDIT: PROWRITINGAID.COM
 

3. Badly Written, Badly Spoken: “Why must ‘brothers and sisters’ be shortened to ‘brethren’?” (The Forum's reply to a very challenging grammar question raised by Forum Member Miss Mae way back in November 2011)

 

4. You Asked Me This Question: “How ‘on the contrary’ and ‘to the contrary’ differ”


         

5. My Media English Watch: “The adjective ‘naked’ gets misplaced in an online news headline”




6. Getting to Know English: “How the three kinds of objects work in English grammar”

       



7. Essays by Jose A. Carillo: “The wonderful thing called ‘voice’”




8. Students’ Sounding Board: “When is sentence inversion a matter of grammar or style?”




9. Language Humor at its Finest: “A treasury of funny quotes and outrageous sayings”  


 

10. Going Deeper Into Language Retrospective: "The relative importance of main clauses and subordinate clauses”




11. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: "A Beauty and a Love Verboten," personal reminiscence in 2012 by Forum Contributor Angel B. Casillan




12. Time Out from English Grammar: "Are you truly conscious, or just an advanced illusion of thought?" British evolutionary biologist-zoologist Richard Dawkins posts in his personal website a chat between him and ChatGPT




13. Advice and Dissent: “The Myth of Social Media and Populism: Why the moral panic is misplaced,” foreign policy commentary by Princeton University professor Jan-Werner Müller




14. Time Out From English Grammar: “A novelist in ill health races with time to finish a masterpiece”




15. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: “Two magnificent performances of ‘The Prayer,’ spaced 10 years apart


THE CHARLOTTE CHURCH-JOSH GROBAN
“THE PRAYER” 2002 LIVE CONCERT PERFORMANCE


THE CHARICE PEMPENGCO AND THE CANADIAN TENORS
“THE PRAYER” 2010 LIVE TV PERFORMANCE

 
22
Getting to Know English / Using inversion for even stronger emphasis
« Last post by Joe Carillo on February 25, 2025, 10:00:49 PM »
One of the pleasures of writing is being able to share not only information and ideas but also one’s feelings about them, but that opportunity rarely comes when doing office memos or straight news journalism. This is because by tradition, most of the sentences of office memos and straight news need to be in the normal subject-verb-complement (S-V/C) pattern: “We launched this widget last week,” “Angela de Mesa did this to someone”—that sort of thing.

In journalism, of course, feature writing rather than just straight news reporting is called for to evoke feeling and emotion about the subject at hand. Take this featurized sentence: “When it comes to doing native-motif woodcarvings, few can beat the artisans of Pakil for sheer craftsmanship.” Its normal S-V/C form is, of course, “Few can beat the artisans of Pakil for sheer craftsmanship when it comes to doing native-motif woodcarvings.” By departing from this norm, the featurized sentence even more strongly conveys certitude and conviction. This reordering of sentence elements enliven otherwise bland statements, and true inversions—the kind whose sentence elements are transposed within the main clause itself—simply carry that process to even more arresting, often even more pleasing extremes.

 

We already know that the need to emphasize is the strongest motivation for inverting sentences, and that one way of achieving emphasis is to put simply the sentence complement up front. (Recall that in English grammar, a complement is a word or word group that completes the predicate in a sentence.) In my previous columns on inversion, we also saw that frontlining the complement—or putting the focus on specific aspects of location, time, or movement as well as shades of meaning—has the added virtue of making a sentence a smooth transitional device.

Now we will look closely at a few more inversion schemes—and more pragmatic ones at that. To fully appreciate their semantic value, however, it’s best to imagine the sample inverted sentences to be given below as being preceded by normal S-V/C sentences. We can then feel more strongly how well the inversion works. The semantic alchemy that inversion performs is, of course, difficult to explain, but there’s absolutely no doubt about its power to perk up prose.

Prepositional phrase as frontline complement: “Beside the martyr’s grave the widow knelt and wept.” This inverted C-S-V sentence powerfully conveys emotion, while its S-V/C construction comes comparatively flat: “The widow knelt and wept beside the martyr’s grave.”

Time of occurrence as frontline complement: “At exactly 8:15 a.m. he fell from the volley of the dictator’s firing squad.” This inverted sentence has an ever so subtle emotional tug, while its S-V/C construction hardly has any: “He fell from the volley of the dictator’s firing squad at exactly 8:15 a.m.”

Locational phrase as frontline complement: “Fifteen blocks later she realized she was hopelessly lost.” This inverted sentence conveys heightened feeling, while its S-V/C form is decidedly deadpan: “She realized she was hopelessly lost 15 blocks later.”

Infinitive phrase as frontline complement: “To those who know her Carol is the epitome of success.” The sense of immediacy of this inverted sentence (without a comma before “Carol”) is much greater than that of its S-V/C pattern: “Carol is the epitome of success to those who know her.”

We know, of course, that the English language reserves its much deeper sentence inversions to express highly emotional states, such as pleasure, passion, frustration, disgust, and anger as well as fierce advocacy and deeply held belief. (At the very top of the inversion spectrum is poetry, which we won’t take up here.).     

Of the deep inversion schemes, here are some of the most useful:   

Frontlining negative adverbs for emphasis: “Never in my time have I seen such a spectacular display of ignorance!” This is obviously much more emphatic than its S-V/C version, “I have never seen such a spectacular display of ignorance in my time,” thus truly meriting the exclamation mark.

Deep C-S-V inversion for emphasis: “Four times I read the book before I could put it down.” Its S-V/C pattern is much less compelling: “I was able to put the book down only after reading it four times.”

Fronting a noun or adjective complement for emphasis: “‘Precious’ is the word that I use to describe/all the feelings I have for you deep down inside.” These lyrics of the old song are, of course, an inversion of this longwinded, confusing S-V/C sentence: “The word that I use to describe all the feelings I have for you deep down inside is ‘precious’.” (Now we know one good reason why song lyrics of this type are not only memorable but pleasurable as well.)

Extraposition of a relative clause for rhetorical purposes: “A woman came in who had nine toddlers and a solitary goat in tow.” Here’s its normal S-V/C form: “A woman who had nine toddlers and a solitary goat in tow came in.” By delivering the verb “came in” much earlier, the inverted sentence reads much better both silently and aloud. This extraposition is thus very useful to spoken narratives and speeches.

This ends our discussion of inverted sentences. Dare anybody at this point still say that he or she can’t perk up an exposition by inverting at least a sentence or two?

This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, subsequently became Chapter 73 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
Using inversion for even stronger emphasis

Next week: Some baffling aspects of inverted sentences       (February 27, 2025)

Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
23
Use and Misuse / GET A STRONGER GRASP OF FREQUENT ENGLISH GRAMMAR MISUSES (5th of the series}
« Last post by Joe Carillo on February 24, 2025, 03:21:23 PM »
To further reinforce your English grammar footing in 2025, Jose Carillo’s English Forum started last January 28, 2025 a series of very common English grammar misuses even by not just a few of its native speakers. This week we’ll end the series by clarifying 6 more such misuses (number 25 to 30) from about 480 that have been taken up in the Forum’s Use and Misuse board over the years, mostly in response to questions raised by Forum members and readers.

25. “When do we use ‘to me’ and ‘for me’?”

                                           IMAGE CREDIT: LEARNINGENGLISH.VOANEWS.COM

My reply to the above question by Forum Member Sky, January 2011: We use “to me,” as in “She gave the apple to me,” to indicate movement or action toward yourself; and “for me,” as in “She reserved the apple for me,” to indicate that the object or recipient of an action is yourself. The important thing to remember is that in general, “to” is a preposition for indicating movement toward a place, person, or thing, while “for” is a preposition for indicating the object or recipient of a perception, desire, or activity as well as for indicating purpose or intended goal.

25. “Always keep in mind that in English, it’s the helping verb that takes the tense”

A rant against bad English grammar by Forum visitor Zzyggy Zubiri, August 2015: “Pardon my grammar and punctuation, for I wasn’t a very good student then. My English may not be that good but still, I find from reading Internet forums that unlike people in India and in other nations that use English as a second language, Filipinos have a very irritating, if not confounding, way of using the past tense with words like ‘did’ or ‘would,’ as in ‘did helped’ or ‘would cared.’ Now I’m starting to think that by sheer force of numbers, they may be correct. Is this what our teachers are teaching in school nowadays or should the teachers themselves be taught? Or, more disturbing is—am I wrong?”


My reply to Zzyggy: Even by sheer force of numbers, not by a long stretch are those Filipinos correct when they use the past tense of the verb with words like “did” or “would,” and I’m absolutely sure that their English teachers aren’t teaching them that terribly wrong usage either. It’s just that being nonnative English speakers, many Filipinos can’t seem to grasp the fact that in English, it’s the helping verb—not the main verb—that takes the tense. I’ve taken up this grammar quirk every now and then in my Manila Times column and in Jose Carillo’s English Forum over the years (https://josecarilloforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=6317.0). However, as I had pointed out to an incredulous lawyer puzzled by the cluelessness of some people about that usage, it does need some serious brainwork to grasp the difference between the tensed main verb and the non-tensed bare infinitive in English sentences.

26. “Words I love to hate—‘signage’ and ‘signages’”

Observation by British Forum Member Gary Covington, July 2010: “I might as well wade in here—English speakers never use the word ‘signage’ or ‘signages.’ Plain old sign or signs do well enough.”

                                                  IMAGE CREDIT: AMZANNEON.COM

My reply to Gary: That may be so, Gary, but American English speakers—Filipinos included—have been using “signage” since 1976 to specifically mean signs of identification, warning or direction, as opposed to the plain word “sign” that denotes “a mark having a conventional meaning and used in place of words or to represent a complex notion.” I find the distinction very useful myself considering that “sign” has at least seven distinct meanings as opposed to “signage,” which has only one, as we can see in this definition by my Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary:

Main Entry: signage
Function: noun
Date: 1976

: signs (as of identification, warning, or direction) or a system of such signs

Click this link for AmzanNeon.com’s very informative website distinguishing between “signs” and “signages.” https://www.amzanneon.com/articles/difference-between-signage-and-sign/

27. “English - how do I love thee?”

Observation by Australian Forum member maxsims, May 2009: “On the cover of English Plain and Simple, Julia Kirby’s commendation ends with the sentence, “If you love the English language as I do, Carillo’s is just the type of book you’ll love having at hand.’ Is not Julia telling us that she loves the English language in a particular but unspecified manner? If she is telling us that she merely loves the language, is not ‘as I do’ parenthetic (a non-restrictive clause) and therefore should have commas fore and aft?"
 

COVER PAGE ENDORSEMENT BY JULIA KIRBY OF THE FIRST EDITION (2003)
OF MY BOOK ENGLISH PLAIN AND SIMPLE

My reply to maxsims: “I think she meant the conditional phrase ‘if you love the English language as I do’ to be taken as a whole, in which case the phrase ‘as I do’ within it is a restrictive, nonparenthetic phrase. Of course, if she intended ‘as I do’ to be nonrestrictive, it should have commas fore and aft as you suggest, but the meaning would be different. The comparative aspect would disappear from the phrase and it would sound as if Julia was saying that if you love the English language, you’d love having at hand the type of book that Carillo has written. It’s clear, though, that she thinks it's enough for people to just love English to the degree that she does to appreciate Carillo’s book. And I must admit that I’m rather comfortable with that idea as it is.

“A favorable review of one’s book is a gift, so I accepted Julia’s critique in the spirit of that good, old adage that 'One shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’ And I must add that I still think that the gift horse was absolutely healthy and remains so today—for which I remain truly grateful to the giver.”

28. “What do you think of initiatives to do away with the serial comma a.k.a as the Oxford comma?”
 
My reply to that question by Forum Member BenVallejo in August 2021: “I am a consistent user of the serial comma in both my private correspondence and published work, so I think the growing practice of doing away with it is ill-advised. I gave my reasons for sticking with it in ‘Why I consistently use the serial comma,’ an essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in July of 2009. I subsequently posted that essay here in the Forum in December of 2010. You may want to check it out by clicking this link to “Using the serial comma isn’t just a matter of stylistic preference.” https://josecarilloforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=1111.0


“Long live the serial comma!”

29. “Should you let your prepositions dangle?”

Whether prepositions should be allowed to end a clause instead of preceding it, or allowed to dangle at the end of the sentence, is still a hotly debated aspect of English grammar. There are those who staunchly cling to the old dictum that a preposition should always immediately follow the clause it modifies, wherever that clause occurs in the sentence, as the “of” in this example: “The approach of which she is thinking is appealing to our stockholders.” This convoluted expression is supposedly grammatically superior to the following more natural, spontaneously sounding sentence: “The approach she is thinking of is appealing to our stockholders.”


About this problem, I gave this recommendation in my May 13, 2017 column in The Manila Times: “If you are formally putting the statement in writing, as in a school essay, thesis, or dissertation, place the dangling preposition inside the sentence where they won’t give you any trouble, or else make it disappear if possible. But if you are giving a lecture, speech, or sermon, let the prepositions dangle for whatever they are worth. You will sound much more natural, engaging, and convincing that way!”

30. “Unsettling violations of the subject-verb agreement rule”

In May 2017, as I was finishing my Manila Times column that reviewed the subject-verb agreement rule, I thought I could already comfortably leave the subject for good. I was wrong. I soon found out that the misuse of the rule is much more serious and pervasive than I thought. And I saw much more clearly that the problem is due not only to a faulty understanding of that rule but also to certain quirks of the English language itself. This prompted me to immediately write this more exhaustive column (“Unsettling violations of the subject-verb agreement rule”) to help curb all those disastrous applications of the subject-verb agreement rule.[/size]


This is the last of the Forum’s five-part series on frequent English grammar misuses
24
Site Announcements / Playlist Update (February 15-21, 2025) of Jose Carillo Forum's Facebook Gateway
« Last post by Joe Carillo on February 19, 2025, 02:15:20 PM »
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR FEBRUARY 15 - 21, 2025 OF JOSE CARILLO ENGLISH FORUM’S FACEBOOK GATEWAY

Simply click the web links to the 15 featured English grammar refreshers and general interest stories this week along with selected postings published in the Forum in previous years:

1. Getting To Know English: “Even more pragmatic uses of inversion”



2. Use and Misuse: “Rich vocabulary, poor spelling”



 
3. Badly Written, Badly Spoken: “Can a sentence use two or more subordinate clauses in a row?”

 

4. My Media English Watch Retrospective: “Confused, grammatically flawed sentence about a fallen dictator”


         

5. You Asked Me This Question: “Differentiation between misinformation and disinformation”




6. Essay by Jose A. Carillo Retrospective: “Thoughts on political propaganda”




7. Your Thoughts Exactly: “How light dawns on us,” personal reflections by Forum Member Melvin (pseud.)




8. Students’ Sounding Board: “Usage of ‘due to’ and ‘because of’”




9. Language Humor at its Finest: “Cracking the human resource code and other workplace mantras”  


 

10. Advice and Dissent: “Grammar poll on a contentious subject-verb agreement disagreement”




11. Readings in Language Retrospective: “There’s more to our passwords than the annoyance they bring”




12. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: “Young upcoming novelist on ‘The Unbearable Costs of Becoming a Writer’”




13. Time Out From English Grammar: “Aside from plays and poetry, did Shakespeare also dabble in sci-fi?”




14. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: “Ever wondered why we have all these anthropomorphic collective nouns?”





15. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: “All That Matters,” a 2013 recollection by Forum Member Tonybau (pseud.) highlighted by memorable renditions of the Broadway hit song “With One Look” by Glenn Close, Shirley Bassey,and Elaine Page


 

25
Getting to Know English / Even more pragmatic uses of inversion
« Last post by Joe Carillo on February 18, 2025, 01:07:40 PM »
We have already taken up how inverted sentences depart from the normal sentence-verb-complement pattern (S-V/C) to put the verb or its complement wherever it can do its work best in the sentence, and how they can serve as powerful transitional devices. This time, we will focus on the even more practical uses and benefits of transposing sentence elements from their normal S-V/C order.

Before doing that, however, let’s first take up a basic pragmatic principle in sentence construction: moving any element of the S-V/C sequence from its normal position gets stronger attention for that element. In general, the element we put up front gets more attention, followed by the one we put at the tail end; the one we put at the middle gets the least attention, or is “backgrounded.”



This is actually why adverbial phrases work so well in starting off sentences: “Hardly appreciated is the contribution of this masterful painter to Philippine art.” See how the tension in the sentence slackens when the adverbial phrase is relegated to its normal position at the tail end: “The contribution of this masterful painter to Philippine art is hardly appreciated.”

Now, take a look at this sentence frontlined by a detached adverb phrase: “Now more articulate than ever, the Greek orator Demosthenes challenged every Athenian firebrand to a debate at the agora.” The sentence packs a strong wallop simply by virtue of having the adverb phrase up front. Normally, of course, the position of that adverb phrase in the normal S-V/C pattern would be in a construction like this: “The Greek orator Demosthenes was now more articulate than ever, so he challenged every Athenian firebrand to a debate at the agora.” Here, the adverb phrase has been “backgrounded” to mid-sentence, where it can’t do an emphasizing job.

(Frontlining adverbial complements is actually the same process as coming up with a “feature element” in a sentence; the adverb phrase “featurizes” otherwise normal S-V/C sentences to make them more interesting to read.)

Adverbial clauses up front aren’t the only grammatical forms that can strongly perk up normal S-V/C sentences. Even relative clauses with clear adverbial connections can work very well as emphasizers—or featurizers—when they lead off sentences. Take this example: “First caught shoplifting in a candy store when she was 9, the fashion diva was sentenced to three years imprisonment in Paris last week for insider stock trading.”

Normally, that relative clause would be the tailender complement in a two-sentence affair like this: “The fashion diva was sentenced to three years imprisonment in Paris last week for insider stock trading. She was first caught shoplifting in a candy store when she was 9.” This straightforward statement, as we can see, simply doesn’t have the power to grab us by the lapels, in contrast to the original version with the relative clause out front.

We must take careful note, though, that in each of the two sample sentences we have examined, the complement was simply moved from a tail end to a frontline position. Meanwhile, the main clause of each sentence retained the normal S-V/C pattern. Take the first example, for instance: “Now more articulate than ever, the Greek orator Demosthenes challenged every Athenian firebrand to a debate at the agora.”

That sentence is actually not a true inverted sentence. Observe that its main clause is a straightforward S-V/C sentence, with the adjunct adverb phrase “now more articulate than ever” simply working to modify the subject of the main clause, “the Greek orator Demosthenes.” But we can clearly see that even if that sentence has stuck to the S-V/C pattern and hasn’t resorted to inversion, its simple physical positioning of the adverb phrase in front instead of in mid-sentence has strongly emphasized the importance of that adverb phrase in the statement.

We have already seen, of course, that a true inverted sentence is one where the transposition of the sentence element—whether the subject, verb, or complement—occurs within the main clause itself. The transposed element doesn’t detach itself from the main clause in the form of a modifying adverb phrase or relative clause, in contrast to the two sample sentences we examined above.

See the difference in these three true inverted sentences: “Over the hills they went.” (Normal pattern: “They went over the hills.”) “Never have I been so disgusted.” (Normal pattern: “I have never been so disgusted.”) “We dared not enter the restricted room.” (Normal pattern: “We did not dare to enter the restricted room.”)

Now we come to the crucial question: short of being literary or poetic, which we don’t really want for our day-to-day prose, what practical uses can we really have for this type of sentence element reorderings?

We will explore some answers to this question in the next week’s column.

This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, subsequently became Chapter 73 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
Even more pragmatic uses of inversion

Next week: Using inversion for stronger emphasis     (February 27, 2025)

Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
26
Use and Misuse / GET A STRONGER GRASP OF FREQUENT ENGLISH GRAMMAR MISUSES (4th of the series)
« Last post by Joe Carillo on February 16, 2025, 11:50:18 PM »
GET A STRONGER GRASP OF FREQUENT ENGLISH GRAMMAR MISUSES
(Fourth of a weekly series)                                                         February 18, 2025

To further reinforce your English grammar footing in 2025, Jose Carillo’s English Forum is running every Tuesday starting last January 28, 2025 a series of very common English grammar misuses even by not just a few of its native speakers. This week we’ll continue the series by clarifying 6 more such misuses (19 to 24) from about 480 that have been taken up in the Forum’s Use and Misuse board over the years, mostly in response to questions raised by Forum members and readers.

19. “Should an object agree with its modifying possessive adjective?

Forum member Mioorphosed posted these intriguing grammar questions: “I read these two sentences in a teacher’s manual and got confused: “Guide the pupils in making their portraits” and “Guide the pupils in making their portrait.” Which of them is correct? Should I consider the nature of the object here, whether noncount or count noun, when deciding which possessive adjective to use?


My reply to Mioorphosed: The answer is a categorical “no.” Whether the possessive adjective should take the singular or plural form is grammatically independent of whether the object it modifies is singular or plural. What determines the number to be taken by the possessive adjective is the sense intended by the writer or speaker. Thus, in the kind of sentence construction you presented, the possessive adjective can theoretically take these various forms that vary not only in number but also in gender:

(1) “Guide the pupils in making their portraits.”
(2) “Guide the pupils in making their portrait.” 
(3) “Guide the pupils in making his portraits.”
(4) “Guide the pupils in making his portrait.”
(5) “Guide the pupils in making her portraits.”
(6) “Guide the pupils in making her portrait.”

The sentences above clearly show that the possessive adjective is independent in number from that of the object it modifies. Also, we need to find out precisely to whom the possessive adjective refers, for it’s possible that the subject could be someone or people not even mentioned in the sentence itself. In fact, it sometimes can only be inferred from the preceding sentences of the exposition.

20. “The need for tense shifts in cases of clause dependency”

The predominant school of thought appears to be that a sentence should have no tense shifts at all. On the contrary, however, tense shifts in English aren’t undesirable at all and shouldn’t be deliberately avoided. What must be avoided are inappropriate tense shifts.


Tense shifts within a sentence are required in three specific cases:
 
(1) If the statement is about events or action happening at different times, a different tense with the appropriate verb form should be used for each event or action. Take this sentence: “I am writing in my diary how it was before I met you.” “I am writing” is in the present tense, and both “how it was” and “I met you” are in the past tense.

(2) If the subordinate clause is about something in a permanent state or condition, or about something that began in the past but continues to the present, the present tense should be used in that clause no matter what tense is used by the main clause. For example: “Ptolemy believed that the Sun revolves around the Earth.”  “Ptolemy believed” is in the past tense; “the sun revolves around the Earth” is in the present tense.”

(3) If the statement directly quotes someone, the tense of what was said shouldn’t be changed to agree with the main clause. For example: “Monica said just now, ‘I will fly to Singapore tomorrow with or without you.’” We really can’t fool around with the tense of the clause inside the quotations. When stated as an indirect quotation, however, the sentence becomes this: “Monica said just now that she will fly to Singapore tomorrow with or without you.”

21. “The lure of the inverted pyramid”

The lure of the inverted pyramid is an art form that’s actually no different from that developed by newspaper reporters for most of their front-page stories. Its secret is this: it first tells you the ultimate result of any chain of events, rather than giving you a blow-by-blow, chronological narration of the events and the developments that led to the outcome. It is very much like putting reality on a headstand, which of course looks like a very unseemly and unnatural thing to do, but it works.



The Forum posting for Item 21 shows a detailed example of inverted pyramid news reporting compared to the upright chronological narration of a board meeting and the developments that led to the outcome.

22. “Avoiding sexism in our English grammar” 


Forum member Miss Mae raised this question: “I just would like to know your opinion about using both ‘he’ and ‘she’ as pronouns for a third-person subject. Some media outfits still use only ‘he’ when the third-person subject is unknown, and I’m still getting you-must-be-a-feminist stare whenever I decide to just use ‘she’ in some of my writings. What should I keep in mind?”


My reply to Miss Mae: The English language indeed has an inherent gender bias, particularly in the conventional use of the male pronouns “he,” “him,” and “his” when the antecedent is a noun of indefinite gender, as in “A trustworthy lawyer is he who respects confidences,” or an indefinite pronoun like “everyone” or “everybody,” as in “Everyone is entitled to his opinion.”
 
The easy way out is, of course, to use the “he or she” form, as in “A trustworthy lawyer is he or she who respects confidences,” or the “his or her” form, as in “Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion.” This is fine if you’ll use the “he or she” form or “his or her” form only once or at most twice in a typical page of written work, but it could grate on the reader’s nerves when repeated several times.

One more thing: You need to be extra-sensitive to the need to avoid gender bias even in less obviously gender-skewed sentence constructions. For example, you need to cultivate the art of avoiding writing or saying, “Everybody is enjoined to bring his wife to the club picnic this weekend.” The gender-bias-free construction for that sentence is, of course, “All are enjoined to bring their spouses to the club picnic this weekend.”

23. “What’s the correct usage of the anticipatory clause?”

Forum Member jerbaks posted this question:

What’s the correct usage of the anticipatory clause in the following sentence:

He told us ________ one man and six women applying for the job.
(A) there was
(B) it was
(C) there were
(D) they were

Some say it’s A while others choose C. Which is correct?


My reply to jerbaks: The test sentence you presented involves the so-called anticipatory “there are (were)”/”there is (was)” clause, and I must tell you right off that it’s not a good multiple-choice grammar test because it doesn’t have a single correct and unambiguous answer. Answer choices “(B) it was” and “(D) they were” are downright grammatically wrong, of course, but either “(A) there was” or “(C) there were” could be considered correct depending on whether your teacher subscribes to the descriptivist or prescriptivist position in English grammar.

The continuing debate between the prescriptivist and descriptivist positions for the usage of the anticipatory “there” clause is what makes the test sentence you presented unsuitable in English grammar tests. The prescriptivists will always invoke the subject-verb agreement aspect to support their position, while the descriptivists will always invoke the need for natural sounding and euphonious sentences regardless of that subject-verb disagreement quirk. I doubt that they will arrive at a common ground sometime soon.

The Forum posting for Item 22 explains in some detail the prescriptivist and descriptivist positions for this debated usage of the anticipatory “there” clause.

24. “We need to banish ‘irregardless’ from our English vocabulary for life”   

There was a lovely Filipina guest on a local TV show who spoke English very fluently and persuasively. Watching her made me wish that all Filipino TV talk-show hosts and newscasters could speak with such unaffected English diction! Midway through her spiel, however, I heard her say a word that shattered my admiration. “Irregardless of what happened during the awards night,” she said, “the members of the movie industry should forget their differences and close ranks so they can move forward.”

                                                              IMAGE CREDIT: I.PINIMG.COM/ORIGINALS

The two negatives that flank the word “regard”—the ir- prefix and the -less suffix—cancel each other out to yield a positive meaning. Recall that the prefix ir- before an adjective whose first syllable is “r” means “not,” and the suffix –less after a word means “without” or “none.” “Irregardless” is therefore not the same as “regardless,” which means “without regard or consideration for,” “in spite of,” or “despite.”

Watch out for the 5th of this series next Tuesday (February 25, 2025)!
27
Site Announcements / Playlist Update (February 8 - 14, 2025) of Jose Carillo Forum's Facebook Gateway
« Last post by Joe Carillo on February 12, 2025, 03:47:16 PM »
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR FEBRUARY 8 - 14, 2025 OF JOSE CARILLO ENGLISH FORUM’S FACEBOOK GATEWAY

Simply click the web links to the 15 featured English grammar refreshers and general interest stories this week along with selected postings published in the Forum in previous years:

1. Getting to Know English: “Using inversion for smooth transitions”



2. Use and Misuse: “Use of ‘hopefully’ and other grammar bugbears”



 
3. Badly Written, Badly Spoken: “An exception to the general rule for speling out numbers in expository writing and journalism”



         

5. Getting to Know English Better: “Why does the word ‘gratuitous’ have two contradictory senses?”




6A. Essay by Jose A. Carillo: “The proper way to construct sentences for reported speech”



THREE RELATED READINGS IN THE FORUM POSTING ABOVE, PLUS THIS POSTING FOR GOOD MEASURE:
6B: Essays by Jose A. Carillo: “How verbs behave in the exceptional sequence”


7. Students’ Sounding Board: “Tough questions about sentence structure and pronoun usage”




8. Readings in Language: “Style as pleasurable mastery rather than minefield of grievous errors”




9. Language Humor at its Finest: “Piecès de résistance in Hollywood moviemaking”  


 

10. Your Thoughts Exactly: “Spectrum of humanity,” a 2013 retrospective essay by Forum Member Melvin (pseud.)




11. Time Out From English Grammar: “For all lovers worldwide, here's the real score about Valentine's Day”




12. A Forum Lounge Retrospective for Valentine's Day: “A Secret Love," a 2010 personal essay by Forum Contributor Angel Casillan




13. Notable Works by Our Very Own: “Literature as History,” a 2005 lecture by F. Sionil Jose, National Artist for Literature,” at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where he was Writer in Residence from April 15 - May 15 that year




14. Readings in Language: “Bridging the disconnect between simplistic and real, live English,” a preview of Frank Cioffi’s One Day in the Life of the English Language: A Microcosmic Usage Handbook




15. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: "Announcement in September 2023 of the release of the third updated edition of Jose Carillo's book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today's Global Language goes off the press”


 
The third updated edition of English Plain and Simple is currently available in bookstores and other outlets listed in Jose Carillo's English Forum. Simply click this link to view the list: https://josecarilloforum.com/imgs/EPS_Stores.jpg
 
28
Getting to Know English / Inverted sentences as transitional devices
« Last post by Joe Carillo on February 12, 2025, 10:46:41 AM »
In last week’s column, we looked at how inverted sentences allow us to abandon the normal subject-verb-complement (S-V/C) sequence so we can deliver the verb or its complement wherever we feel it can do its work best. We also observed that sentences structured this way could serve as powerful tools for emphasizing and for heightening feeling.

These lines from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet XVIII,” for instance, achieve these goals through C-S-V inversion:

   “Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
   And often is his gold complexion dimm’d.”

Now here’s that same idea in the normal S-V/C pattern:

   The eye of heaven shines too hot sometimes,
   and its gold complexion is dimmed often.

The first version, no doubt, is memorable poetry; the second, an immediately forgettable declarative sentence.




One criticism against inverted sentences, of course, is that they can give prose a strained literary or poetic tone that’s unsuitable for day-to-day communication. Indeed, talk like Shakespeare when arguing your case to a boss or prospective employer and you can be sure of being promptly shown the door! From the practical standpoint, though, inverted sentences can be very effective transitional devices beyond the sentence level. They can provide a seamless, effortless flow of ideas as we develop an exposition or discourse from one sentence to the next.

Consider the role the inverted sentences play in the following exposition:

      That morning, Amelia did just anything she wanted in class. She sang and whistled. Three times she darted out of the room on a
        whim. She booed a reciting classmate. Twice she rudely interrupted her teacher. At no time did she relent in her impertinence or    
        apologize for her misdeeds. Worse, she felt no guilt at all. Rarely had she behaved this    way, and it disturbed her to realize only
        the next morning that she had gravely offended    her teacher.

Now see what happens when we render the inverted sentences above in the normal S-V/C pattern:

   Amelia did just anything she wanted in class that morning. She sang and whistled. She    darted out of the room three times on a
        whim. She booed a reciting classmate. She rudely interrupted her teacher twice. She did not relent in her impertinence and did not
        apologize for her misdeeds at any time. She felt no guilt at all, which was worse. She had rarely behaved this way, and she found
        it disturbing to realize only the next morning that she had gravely offended her teacher.

What seems to have happened to the exposition when all its inverted sentences—and also its sentences with an adverbial phrase in front—were put in the normal sentence pattern? Well, for one, the sense of drama and tension is largely gone. For another, the exposition now feels craggy, disjointed. And like a slow-moving train it now moves on its all-too-predictable tracks, neither swerving nor taking a bump, intent to simply reach its final destination.           

When we compare the two passages above closely, it becomes clear how powerfully this inverted C-V-S sentence effects a transition: “At no time did she relent in her impertinence and apologize for her misdeeds.” It neatly sums up the consistency of Amelia’s erratic behavior as described in the preceding five sentences (“At no time did she relent in her impertinence”), while smoothly shifting the exposition to what was expected of her after behaving so badly (“apologize for her misdeeds”). The normal-pattern version makes no such transition at all and just plods on.

Similarly, the second inverted C-V-S sentence smoothly makes a transition from the exposition’s narrative mode to interpretative: “Rarely had she behaved this way, and it disturbed her to realize only the next morning that she had gravely offended her teacher.” In its normal S-V/C version (“She had rarely behaved this way, and she found it disturbing...”), the simple declarative mode is pursued without letup. The end result: a flat exposition with no highs and lows whatsoever.

Now, notice that our two sample inverted sentences begin with the negative phrases “at no time” and “rarely,” respectively. These phrases belong to the class of negative and restrictive adverbs that work so well in starting off inverted sentences doing transitional work. Other common adverbs in this class are “only,” “never,” “hardly,” and “little,” as in these inverted sentences: “Only when I cry does the pain come back.” “Never have I seen such a ravishingly beautiful woman.”

Comparative and duration adverbs like “equally,” “marginally,” and “simultaneously” likewise work well as transitionals in inverted sentences like this two: “Equally important to the job is a mastery of English.” “Marginally useful to our enterprise was the contribution of our Tokyo subsidiary.”

Whatever adverbial expressions lead them off, however, inverted sentences are rarely stand-alone affairs. And they work best as welcome breaks from a procession of normal-pattern sentences, providing functional transitions that make prose much smoother and more pleasing to read.

This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, subsequently became Chapter 73 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times:
Inverted sentences as transitional devices

Next week: Even more pragmatic uses of inversion     (February 20, 2025)

Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
29
Use and Misuse / GET A STRONGER GRASP OF FREQUENT ENGLISH GRAMMAR MISUSES (3rd of the series)
« Last post by Joe Carillo on February 10, 2025, 04:19:58 PM »
GET A STRONGER GRASP OF FREQUENT ENGLISH GRAMMAR MISUSES
(Third of a weekly series)                                                   February 11, 2025

To further reinforce your English grammar footing in 2025, Jose Carillo’s English Forum is running every Tuesday starting last January 28, 2025 a series of very common English grammar misuses even by not just a few of its native speakers. This week we’ll continue the series by clarifying 6 more such misuses (number 13 to 18 in the series) from about 480 that have been taken up in the Forum’s Use and Misuse board over the years, mostly in response to questions raised by Forum members and readers.

13. “The proper use of ‘can’ and ‘may’ as a mark of civility”

Very basic but admittedly baffling questions posed by Forum member Mylabskie in April 2017: “When should we use ‘may’ and ‘can’? When do we say ‘Can I go out?’ and ‘May I go out’?”



My reply to Mylabskie: We use the modal verbs “may” or “can” (1) to express possibility, (2) to denote the capacity to do something, or (3) to express permission or ask for it. For this third purpose, our choice between “may” and “can” depends on the level of formality of the situation and on the social or professional rank or relative seniority between the speaker and listener.

As a general rule, “can” leans towards the informal side of saying things, and “may” towards the formal side. I must point out though that this distinction between “can” and “may” is often not very well understood and appreciated even by nonnative speakers of English. As explained in detail in the Forum’s reply to Mylabskie, it often takes years of social interaction in formal settings or situations for them to grasp and internalize the usage differences.

14. “Questionable usage of the word ‘boring’ in a K-12 English module”

Question sent to my Personal Messages box by Forum Member Baklis in March 2015: “As I skimmed through an English module for K-12*, I came across this sentence construction: ‘His song is boring to hear.’ Take note that the word ‘boring’ is used as a present participle in that sentence, but it seems to me that there’s something wrong with that sentence. For me, the word ‘boring’ there functions as an adjective and not as a participle. Please do shed light on this.”



My reply to Baklis: You’re right in your perception that something’s wrong with this sentence from that K-12 English module: “His song is boring to hear.” It’s actually a redundant construction for the succinct “His song is boring,” in which it’s unmistakable that the word “boring” is an adjective rather than a present participle as indicated by that module. By definition, the adjective “boring” means “causing boredom” or “tiresome,” a state of mind or condition that in the context of, say, a song is obviously perceived through the sense of hearing, so it’s superfluous—needless—to still qualify it with the modifying phrase “to hear.” (It’s as awkward as saying “Her home-cooked lasagna is satisfying to eat.”)

15. Question posted by a Forum Member in November 2009: “Can we use ‘too’ and ‘either’ interchangeably?”

My reply to Forum Member Sky: No, Sky, “too” and “either” aren’t interchangeable at all. The adverb “too” means “besides” or “also,” as in “All these and heaven, too.” The sense is additive. In contrast, “either” gives the sense of an alternative. It’s often used as a conjunction to indicate that what immediately follows a certain item is the first of two or more alternatives, as in “Take this either as a gift or a voluntary contribution.” Even when “either” is used as an adverb, it means “likewise” or “moreover” but only in the sense of giving emphasis after a negative, as in “She isn’t popular or likable either.”



Forum members Hill Roberts and Bunty (pseud.) each posted a response to Sky’s question.

16. “The mood of the sentence determines whether ‘I’ is to be followed by ‘was’ or ‘were’”

Forum Member Miss Mae posted this grammar dilemma of hers in July 2010: She said that she had been taught in elementary school that the grammatically correct usage is for the first-person personal pronoun “I” to be always followed by “were” (the plural past tense of the verb “be”). However, she said that she had always found it more “comfortable” to use “was” (the singular past tense of “be”) in such instances. That her choice of “was” correct was confirmed by that word’s use in the title of the 1957 film I Was a Teenage Werewolf, but it was contradicted by Frank Lloyd’s use of “were” for the singular noun “king” in the title of his 14th film If I Were King. Miss Mae thus asked the Forum for advice on whether to discard her long-time personal preference for “was” in such sentence constructions and revert to “were” as she had been taught in grade school.



My reply to Miss Mae: I’m sorry to say that you got it wrong that the first-person personal pronoun “I” should always be followed by the past-tense form of the verb “be,” which is “were.” Your elementary-school English teacher was clearly misinformed and evidently confused about that usage, and the fact that you personally decided it was more comfortable to use the past-tense form “was” tells me that you instinctively knew better grammar than your grade school English teacher.

To clearly understand the distinction between these usages, we need to do a quick review of the three moods of verbs in English. By mood, of course, we mean that aspect of the verb that expresses the state of mind or attitude of the speaker toward what he or she is saying. The three moods are the indicative mood, the imperative mood, and the subjunctive mood, which were explained in detail in the Forum’s reply to Miss Mae.

17. “No need to hold ‘celebrant’ in a semantic straightjacket”

The Philippines being a predominantly Roman Catholic country, there’s a tendency for the supposedly English-savvy among us to scoff at people who describe as a “celebrant” someone celebrating a birthday or some other auspicious occasion. “Oh, no, that isn’t right!” they’d often cut off and gleefully heckle the speaker. “The right word is ‘celebrator’; ‘celebrant’ means a priest officiating the Holy Mass!”



But are people who use “celebrator” in that context really wrong? Do they really deserve all that heckling?  Sometime ago, after witnessing yet another savage if good-natured ribbing that someone got for using “celebrant” to mean a birthday “celebrator”, I decided to look deeper into the usage by checking and counterchecking with four leading and authoritative English dictionaries.

18. “Are you correctly using ‘between’ and ‘among’?”

Until my college days I used to be supremely confident of choosing correctly between the prepositions “between” and “among.” This was because my grade-school grammar teachers had so efficiently drilled into my brain this very simple rule: “Use ‘between’ for two, and use ‘among’ for more than two.” The rule worked very well indeed for sentence constructions involving twosomes, like “The bond between Eduardo and Alberto is very strong,” and for those involving threesomes or more, like “Choosing from among three or five job applicants is easy.” I hardly batted an eyelash when making the choice.



But there finally came a time when I began to have my doubts. Using “between” rarely gave me problems, but there were far too many situations when using “among” for threesomes or more simply didn’t seem right. Sentences like the following particularly baffled me: “The chiffon cake was divided among Ana, Gloria, and Julia.” “The stewardess had mud among her fingers.” In all two cases, “among” seemed to me a grammatical misfit and “between” a more natural choice—which was confirmed by my further research on the matter.

--------------
*The K to 12 curriculum in the Philippines covers Kindergarten and 12 years of basic education.

Watch out for the 4th of this series next Tuesday (February 18, 2025)!
30
Site Announcements / Playlist Update (February 1 - 7, 2025) of Jose Carillo Forum's Facebook Gateway
« Last post by Joe Carillo on February 04, 2025, 11:05:30 PM »
PLAYLIST UPDATE FOR FEBRUARY 1 - 7, 2025 OF JOSE CARILLO ENGLISH FORUM’S FACEBOOK GATEWAY

Simply click the web links to the 15 featured English grammar refreshers and general interest stories this week along with selected postings published in the Forum in previous years:


1. Getting to Know English: “Using inversion for smooth transitions”




2. Use and Misuse: “Doing battle with the recurrent misuse of the conjunction ‘as’”



 
3. You Asked Me This Question: “The difference between ‘going to’ and ‘will’”

 


4. My Media English Watch: “Avoiding misuse of the conjunction ‘as well as’ in newspaper reporting”


 
         
5. Getting to Know English Better: “We shouldn’t mistake mass nouns for collective nouns”


MASS NOUNS: LOTS OF SAND, A PLATE OF PEAS, A BUNCH OF MARBLES
                                       
                                       
                                        TYPICAL EXAMPLES OF COLLECTIVE NOUNS


6. Essay by Jose A. Carillo (Retrospective): “The reign of the dreadful clichés”




7. Students’ Sounding Board: “Does ‘have to’ mean the same as the modal auxiliary ‘must’?”




8. Readings  in Language: “Teaching our children to think logically”




9. Language Humor at its Finest: “A Cavalcade of Palindromes”  




10. Your Thoughts Exactly: “Outrage over a wasted investment in English proficiency,” retrospective to a 2007 letter to the Forum by a U.S.-based American married to a Filipina




11. Views and Commentaries: “Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love,” personal essay by Forum Contributor Maximo Tumbali



                             
 

12. Advice and Dissent Retrospective: “Our personal destiny may already be hard-wired into our brain,” Cambridge neuroscientist Hannah-Critchlow asserts in her 2019 book The Science of Fate




13. Notable Works by Our Very Own: “Tales of the longest-staying Malacañang resident except for one,” a 2010 Forum preview of the the late Raul A.Gonzalez’s book My Malacañang




14. Readings in Language: “The triumph of English over Babel to become the language of science,” a preview of science historian Michael Gordin’s book Scientific Babel




15. A Forum Lounge Retrospective: “Hidden Miracles of the Natural World,” a YouTube TED video presentation by filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg using high-speed cameras, time lapses, and microscopes






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