Question sent by e-mail by Miss Mae (March 7, 2011):Dear Mr. Carillo,
It's embarrassing, but I was only able to appreciate one of your grammar prescriptions today.
You have advised to keep the operative verb of a sentence as close as possible to the subject. I heeded that, but was not fully convinced. Why disrupt the flow of a writer's thoughts?
But as I was reading a news article today, I realized by myself how the distance of a subject to its action can disorient. My question is, how much right a writer has in paraphrasing direct quotes? I used to do it whenever I think the material would sound better. It didn't occur to me to reconsider since what I would do is for the good of the story.
I'm referring to this statement from the National Statistics Office: “The series of price hikes in gasoline and diesel nationwide, higher electricity and water rates and increased land transport fares in many regions including NCR [National Capital Region] also contributed to the uptrend.”
As you might say, the operative verb contributed is 21 words away from the subject price hikes. I would rather have it written as: “The series of price hikes also contributed to the uptrend, such as in gasoline and diesel, electricity and water rates, and land transport fares in many regions including NCR [National Capital Region].”
Am I right, Sir? In an exercise we did in college, I remember elongating a single sentence our professor asked us to turn into a headline. His threat to expel me if I continue doing that as well as your admonition for putting subjects and verbs close together made me observe your grammar prescription faithfully.
I hope you would answer my question.
Curious,
Miss Mae
My reply to Miss Mae:A news reporter or feature writer obviously has to be judicious in reporting statements made by respondents or news sources, whether those statements are actually uttered by them (perhaps tape-recorded and transcribed afterwards) or made in the form of press releases. When the statements are crystal clear, there’s actually no need for heavy paraphrase; all that needs to be done is simple transcription to the news or feature format. Of course, the story can be made more readable and interesting by presenting as direct quotes particularly telling or emphatic parts of the statement that happen to be grammar-perfect in every way. When a statement is too convoluted for comfort or is grammatically flawed, however, it needs to be clarified through a suitable paraphrase and can no longer be presented nor passed off as a direct quote.
The big question, though, is how much paraphrasing should be done to a convoluted or grammatically faulty statement. There’s no easy general answer to this question, of course, for much will depend on the quality of the writing and the particular grammatical elements involved.
But simply for illustrative purposes, let’s take the case of that particular statement you presented from
a news story in The Manila Times. To put that statement in context, I have added the lead sentence and the sentence right before that statement:
Inflation in February shot up to a 10-month high and surpassed the Philippine central bank’s forecast for the month mostly because of costlier food and services…
Excluding selected food and energy items, core inflation picked up to 3.5 percent in February from 3.3 percent in January.
The series of price hikes in gasoline and diesel nationwide, higher electricity and water rates and increased land transport fares in many regions including NCR [National Capital Region] also contributed to the uptrend.
You pointed out that in the second sentence above, the operative verb “contributed” is 21 words away from the subject “price hikes.” Because of this, the readability of that sentence isn’t as good as it should be. Following the principle that for optimum sentence clarity, it’s best to make the operative verb as close as possible to its subject or doer of the action, you therefore suggested the following paraphrase for that sentence:
“The series of price hikes also contributed to the uptrend, such as in gasoline and diesel, electricity and water rates, and land transport fares in many regions including NCR [National Capital Region].”
It’s a good try but I must say that it isn’t good enough. Your rewrite has indeed brought the verb “contributed” practically adjacent to the noun “price hikes” as doer of the action, but I don’t think it has improved the readability of that statement that much; on the contrary, it has introduced very significant distortions to the sense of the original sentence. The use of the enumerative phrase “such as” is particularly problematic because its antecedent noun is unclear; it can’t be “uptrend” and it can’t be “price hikes” either, so what we have here is nothing less than a dangling modifying phrase. This is like jumping from the frying pan to the fire, so to speak.
I think the following paraphrase clarifies the original sentence much better and remains scrupulously faithful to its intended sense:
“Also contributing to the uptrend were the series of price hikes in gasoline and diesel nationwide, higher electricity and water rates, and increased land transport fares in many regions including the National Capital Region.”
Now see how this paraphrase blends so smoothly with the sentences that precede it in the passage:
Inflation in February shot up to a 10-month high and surpassed the Philippine central bank’s forecast for the month mostly because of costlier food and services…
Excluding selected food and energy items, core inflation picked up to 3.5 percent in February from 3.3 percent in January.
Also contributing to the uptrend were the series of price hikes in gasoline and diesel nationwide, higher electricity and water rates, and increased land transport fares in many regions including the National Capital Region.
This paraphrase uses the inverted sentence technique, where the operative verb (“contributing’) precedes the doers of the action (the long noun phrase preceded by the phrase “the series”). It’s a rather advanced composition strategy in English for handling subjects or doers of the action that are stated in a longwinded enumerative form, but it’s actually routinely used by experienced journalists as an effective continuity device for narratives.
