This week, I’m starting my own media English-usage watch to help beleaguered editors and writers as well as their readers or listeners make sense of—and deal better with—the seriously fractured English grammar and semantics that sometimes creep into media stories.
Here goes the most problematic media passage that I came across during the past week:
Two paragraphs from a murder story, copied verbatim here, in the inside pages of a recent issue of a Philippine daily broadsheet:
There was supposed to be a smooth flow of investigation as Bicolano journalist Antonio Castillo claimed to have identified his shooters but when he unexpectedly died in a hospital due to the bullet wounds he suffered, it spelled out trouble for Masbate police investigators.
But Senior Inspector Aurora Moran, chief of the Uson town police in Masbate, said the identity of the perpetrators did not totally died when Castillo as a witness was able to identify the driver of the motorcycle and his backrider who shot him.
What’s grammatically wrong and semantically problematic with the above passage? Let me underline its errant ways:
There was supposed to be a smooth flow of investigation as Bicolano journalist Antonio Castillo claimed to have identified his shooters but when he unexpectedly died in a hospital due to the bullet wounds he suffered, it spelled out trouble for Masbate police investigators.
But Senior Inspector Aurora Moran, chief of the Uson town police in Masbate, said the identity of the perpetrators did not totally died when Castillo as a witness was able to identify the driver of the motorcycle and his backrider who shot him.
My critique and suggested improvements:
1. “There was supposed to be a smooth flow of investigation” – This use of the expletive “there”* is supposed to be a big no-no in journalism not only because it’s a semantically weak grammatical construction but because you could be branded a lazy writer if you used it in your lead sentence for straight news. Better: “The investigation into the shooting of Bicolano journalist Antonio Castillo was supposed to be proceeding smoothly.”
2. “…Bicolano journalist Antonio Castillo claimed to have identified his shooters” – This is highly problematic phrasing because the journalist didn’t just claim to have identified his shooters; he actually identified them. And “shooters” sounds such an awkward word choice; “assailants” would be much better journalistically. Better phrasing of the problematic statement: “Bicolano journalist Antonio Castillo had identified his assailants.”
3. “when he unexpectedly died in a hospital” – To say that the victim died “unexpectedly” in this context doesn’t sound logical, for when someone is gunned down, there’s a very real possibility of him succumbing to the injury. Better to drop “unexpectedly” from the statement: “but when he died in a hospital.”
4. “(due to) the bullet wounds he suffered” – Qualifying “bullet wounds” with “he suffered” is redundant. Better: “(from) bullet wounds.”
5. “spelled out trouble” – Misuse of idiom; the correct idiom is “spelled trouble,” without the preposition “out.” To “spell out” is to literally spell out a word or enumerate something.
6. “…the identity of the perpetrators did not totally died” – English gets a triple whammy here. First, the identity of perpetrators or any person for that matter won’t “die” in this context; it just may never be known. Second, in English, a verb used in the negative sense needs the helping verb “do,” and the rule in such cases is that it’s the helping verb that takes the tense, not the main verb. Thus, the correct construction for the phrase “did not totally died” is “did not totally die.” Third and finally, people either die or remain alive and as far as is known in the natural world, there’s no in-between between these two states of existence; the adverb “totally” is therefore redundant here.
7. “(when) Castillo as a witness” – He wasn’t a witness to the shooting; he was, in fact, its victim. Calling him a “witness” here is thus semantically wrong—a cockeyed view of looking at things. The phrase “as a witness” thus needs to be dropped altogether. Correct: “(when) Castillo.”
8. “was able to identify the driver of the motorcycle and his backrider who shot him” – Awkward, confusing phrasing; and precisely who shot whom? This statement needs a total rewrite to properly connect to the statement preceding it in the same sentence.
Taking all of the above discussions into account, here’s a suggested rewrite of that passage:
The investigation into the shooting of Bicolano journalist Antonio Castillo was supposed to be proceeding smoothly but when he died in a hospital [indicate when here] from his bullet wounds, it spelled trouble for the Masbate police investigators.
But Senior Inspector Aurora Moran, chief of the Uson town police in Masbate, expressed confidence that the assailants would be arrested soon because the victim was able to identify them before he died. Castillo said the gunman who shot him was riding at the back of a motorcycle being driven by an accomplice.
This will be all for now.
--------
*Expletive – In the context of the above discussions, my digital Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines “expletive” as “a word (as it in ‘make it clear which you prefer’) that occupies the position of the subject or object of a verb in normal English word order and anticipates a subsequent word or phrase that supplies the needed meaningful content.” The other expletive, of course, is “there,” as in “There seems to be something wrong with your grammar in that sentence.” In newspaper journalism, in particular, editors normally insist that reporters get rid of that “there” by rewriting the sentence as follows: “Something seems to be wrong with your grammar in that sentence,” or, even more concisely, “Something seems wrong with your grammar in that sentence.”
What do you think of the state of English usage in the Philippine media today? Has it improved or has it worsened? Why do you think so? Click the Reply button to post your thoughts on Jose Carillo’s English Forum.
