The four major Metro Manila broadsheets continued to be free of major English grammar and usage errors for almost two months now, but I came across three serious cases of word choice and sentence construction problems that I thought we need to thoroughly discuss here.
The first is about how a newspaper should report a quoted statement that’s evidently semantically or grammatically flawed, the second is about how to fix the convoluted and confusing sentence that results when it is introduced by an extremely long and complicated modifying phrase, and the third is about how to deal with a structurally troublesome restrictive relative clause in a sentence.
Let’s start with the ticklish semantic problem in this passage from a major news story that came out in one of the major broadsheets a few days ago:
(1) Philippine Daily Inquirer (Internet edition): Ticklish semantic problem in a direct quote Condom ads ban might curtail freedom of speech, says Roxas“While it was the CBCP’s right to make such call, [Senator Manuel III] Roxas said it would be difficult if the government would impose such prohibition.
“Like Roxas, Senator Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III also
expressed reservations [sic] on this proposed ban on condom ads.
“‘
Kailangang pag-aralan ng konti ’yan. Hindi ko alam kung pwedeng i-ban outright
ang ads (We need to study this. I don’t know if we could ban the ads outright),” Aquino said in a separate interview here.
“‘I think there’s still a stipulation that does not allow that
unless it offends moral obscenity…,” he added.”
Now, it’s clear that in the last direct quote above, the speaker—unless he was misquoted by the reporter—messed up with his statement by wrongly using the phrase “unless it offends moral obscenity.” From the context of the sentence, he evidently meant to say something like “unless it offends moral values,” or words to that effect.
As I always emphasize when discussing situations like this in my English-usage seminar-workshops, the reporter—whether of a newspaper or magazine or simply someone relating the event informally to a listener—has two choices:
1. Let the quote of the messed-up statement stand and make the quoted person suffer the embarrassment of not being precise or circumspect with what he is saying, or
2. Spare the quoted person from being a laughingstock by paraphrasing the quoted statement, particularly if the semantic error is an honest and harmless mistake.
The problem with Choice 1 is, of course, that it not only could subject the quoted person to public ridicule but also might cast doubt on the grammar-savviness and sense of fairness of the reporter, the desk editor, and the whole paper itself. (I sometimes say with some levity that reporters often let messed-up statements like this stand if they don’t particularly like the person who made the direct quote.)
In such situations, therefore, I always recommend Choice 2, and I’m taking that option now by making the following paraphrase of the messed-up statement:
“He added that
it was his impression that condom ads may not be banned unless they offend moral values.”
When we do this, even if we don’t fudge the flawed statement, everybody comes out smelling like roses.
NOTE: In that part of the statement that I marked “sic” above, “expressed reservations,” the correct usage is “expressed reservation,” without the “s” in “reservation.” Semantically, “expressing reservation” means “expressing doubt or misgiving”; it’s not in the same league as “making reservations,” which means “reserving something,” as when one makes a hotel booking.
(2) The Manila Times: Convoluted and confusing sentenceCreativity Summit reaches out to the marginalized“Aimed at fulfilling the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) led by Chairman Vilma Labrador, Executive Director Cecile Guidote Alvarez, and Deputy Executive Director Malou Jacob in cooperation with the International Theater Institute (ITI) is set to open the Creativity Summit on Kalahi Cultural Caregiving and a Short + Sweet Festival on March 10 to 14.”
What is that sentence saying? I’ll bet that you must have reread it at least two or three times before getting the idea—that it’s about the opening of a two-pronged activity called the “Creativity Summit on Kalahi Cultural Caregiving and a Short + Sweet Festival” on March 10 to 14.
But, you may ask, why did it take that long for you to figure out what that sentence was all about? The short and sweet answer is that it took the sentence all of 44 words before delivering its operative verb to you, and that operative verb is, of course, “is set to open” (which, by the way, isn’t just a simple verb but a rather complicated verb phrase). Before that poor verb phrase could do its job, though, you had to first survive a deluge of so many nouns and qualifiers—all strongly jockeying for your attention even if none is immediately necessary for your understanding of what that sentence has to say.
This is the problem that arises when writers get tempted to place extremely long modifying phrases ahead of the main clause of the sentence—putting a big, long cart way ahead of the horse, so to speak. The cart here is, of course, the 44-word participial phrase “aimed at fulfilling the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) led by Chairman Vilma Labrador, Executive Director Cecile Guidote Alvarez, and Deputy Executive Director Malou Jacob in cooperation with the International Theater Institute (ITI)”—and, as we can see, on board of that cart are so many concepts, entities, and people clamoring for recognition and attention even if we don’t know yet why they are on board in the first place!
This is actually a very common press-release phenomenon. Publicists or press agents, either very eager to please or under great pressure to pander to the egos of their bosses, make sure that their bosses’ names are incorporated into the lead sentence of the press release—the better to spare those names from being pruned by newspaper editors when the release turns out to be longer than the available space. As we can see, though, the effort is totally counterproductive, often resulting in grammatical and semantic bedlam. In fact, the sentence in question has ended up with a badly misplaced modifier, with the participial phrase “aimed at fulfilling the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)” wrongly modifying the noun phrase “the National Commission for Culture and the Arts” instead of its correct referent, “the Creativity Summit on Kalahi Cultural Caregiving and a Short + Sweet Festival.”
Of course, newspaper section editors should routinely rectify such misguided sentence constructions in press releases, so that they could end up getting published like a good news release should be—clear, concise, and imminently readable. This is what I’ll attempt to do now in the hope that it will become a template for those who haven’t learned yet how to handle press releases of this type:
“The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) will hold its Creativity Summit on Kalahi Cultural Caregiving along with a Short + Sweet Festival on March 10 to 14 in cooperation with the International Theater Institute (ITI). The two events are in fulfillment of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that UN-member countries are mandated to pursue.
“The activities are being spearheaded by Vilma Labrador, NCCA chairman; Cecile Guidote Alvarez, NCCA executive director; and Malou Jacob, NCCA deputy executive director.”
(3) Philippine Daily Inquirer: Structurally troublesome restrictive relative clause Judge denies being pressured by Tingas “MANILA, Philippines—The Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge
, who handled the case against three suspected drug pushers in Taguig City in 2007, on Thursday denied he was pressured by then Supreme Court Associate Justice Dante Tinga and his son Sigfrido, Taguig’s mayor, into dismissing the suit.”
This is a defective sentence construction that wrongly treats a restrictive relative clause as a nonrestrictive one, thus messing up the semantics of the sentence. The relative clause in question is, of course, “who handled the case against three suspected drug pushers in Taguig City in 2007.” It should actually be an integral part of the long noun phrase “The Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge who handled the case against three suspected drug pushers in Taguig City in 2007,” which as a whole is the doer of the action in the sentence. However, the writer or the desk editor decided to put a comma before and after the relative clause “who handled the case against three suspected drug pushers in Taguig City in 2007,” making it a nonrestrictive relative clause instead.
The net effect of that decision was to make that clause optional in the sentence, meaning that the sentence should now be able to stand on its own without it: “The Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge on Thursday denied he was pressured by then Supreme Court Associate Justice Dante Tinga and his son Sigfrido, Taguig’s mayor, into dismissing the suit.” As we can see, however, the judge referred to in this new sentence has become generic; he could now be any RTC judge and need not be the one “who handled the case against three suspected drug pushers in Taguig City in 2007.” In short, the semantics of the original sentence has been badly messed up.
Looking more closely into the problem, however, we can appreciate why the reporter or deskperson in this case decided to deploy those two commas even if the semantics of the sentence was messed up in the process. Take a look at the sentence and read it without those two commas:
“MANILA, Philippines—The Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge who handled the case against three suspected drug pushers in Taguig City in 2007 on Thursday denied he was pressured by then Supreme Court Associate Justice Dante Tinga and his son Sigfrido, Taguig’s mayor, into dismissing the suit.”
Now, without the two commas, the sentence is scrupulously correct in its use of the restrictive phrase “who handled the case against three suspected drug pushers in Taguig City in 2007.” However, the sentence has become convoluted and very confusing without those commas serving as some form of “thought pauses.” Is there any way we can make that sentence read properly and still keep it grammatically and semantically correct?
I admit that this is an extraordinary problem calling for an extraordinary solution, but I can think of the following sentence reconstruction to sidestep the problem:
“MANILA, Philippines—The Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge who handled the case against three suspected drug pushers in Taguig City in 2007
, in a statement released on Thursday, denied he was pressured by then Supreme Court Associate Justice Dante Tinga and his son Sigfrido, Taguig’s mayor, into dismissing the suit.”
Note that I have used the expedient of using the attributive prepositional phrase “in a statement on Thursday” to provide a much-needed break between the long noun phrase (the subject of the sentence) and the operative verb “denied.” I think you’ll agree that the sentence now clearly says what it wants to say despite having such a long noun phrase for a subject.
