Dear BenK,
Just call me Joe. Being called Prof. Carillo is not only inappropriate but, for me, also too staid for comfort. I’m not an academic, just someone trying to share what I know about English with those who feel the need to communicate more proficiently with it.
Welcome to the Forum! I was really surprised—but pleasantly, I must hasten to add—to read your self-introduction above. I have been regularly following your column in The Manila Times and I’ll say without any equivocation that you write well and that your English is grammatically beyond reproach. It therefore gladdens me that a newspaper columnist of your stature has joined the Forum as part of a continuing self-improvement program in English. I can only presume that like many of the Forum members, you’ve looked over the Forum’s contents and saw that its discussions of English grammar and usage could indeed be of help in furthering your mastery of the writing craft.
There are actually several ways of benefiting from your Forum membership. You can post questions about English and literally about any related subject under the sun—or offer answers to questions asked by other Forum members—in any of the Forum’s discussion boards. If you find it too embarrassing to openly post a nagging question because it may be too elementary for your age or calling, you have the option of posting it in your Personal Messages box and I’ll answer it privately for you. (If you have to ask too many questions of that sort, though, you may want to consider coming up with a different username for them; to ensure total privacy, simply register that username separately from your real name.) Then, every time you feel the need, you can unburden your personal thoughts about anything (short of obscenity, inciting to sedition, and the like) in the boards for “My Thoughts Exactly” or “Advocacies.” And, of course, you can freely access the wealth of instruction about English grammar and usage and whatever that have accumulated in the Forum since it started in August 2009 or over four years ago.
Since you are a media person, BenK, I’m sure that every now and then, you’d see or hear quite a few English grammar and usage errors being committed by fellow journalists in print and broadcast. For a good overview of the most common of those errors, check out the Forum’s “My Media English Watch” board. There, you’ll find my previous critiques of and prescriptions for every major English grammar and usage travesty that I found in Philippine media during the past three years; going over them would save you the trouble of asking questions about them yourself. Of course, every time you encounter some dubious, baffling, or newfangled English grammar and usage that haven’t been taken up in the Forum yet, feel free to post them or critique them in the Forum yourself.
This will be all, BenK. I wish you all the best as a new member of the Forum!
Sincerely yours,
Joe Carillo
