I went over the major news stories of the four major Metro Manila broadsheets this morning (March 19) and was disappointed to see the following telltale signs of sloppy writing or editing, or both:
(1) Philippine Star: Nonsensical sentence due to faulty construction3 senators say no to outright rejection of nuclear power program
MANILA, Philippines - Three senators argued against an outright rejection of a nuclear power program in the country because of the damage to the nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan caused by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake.
Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who filed a bill calling for a revisiting of the nuclear power option, said that the statements issued against the revival of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) were alarmist and “borne out of superstition and ignorance.”
Santiago said the BNPP was a more modern facility compared to the Fukushima plant, which lost its cooling system because of the earthquake last week.
Take a close look at the lead sentence of the news story above. It’s saying exactly the opposite of what it means to say. The intended sense, of course, is that the three Filipino senators are saying that the damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan shouldn’t be used as a basis for outright rejection of the Philippine nuclear power option. What emerges, however, is the absurd sense that because of the damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the three senators are arguing against outright rejection of the Philippine nuclear power option. This makes those three senators sound very unreasonable and illogical indeed!
Faulty sentence construction is obviously the culprit in this serious garbling of the intended message. Indeed, nothing less than a total rewrite of that sentence can fix its bad semantics. Here’s my suggested fix:
“Three senators argued yesterday
that the damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan should not be used as a basis for outright rejection of the Philippine nuclear power option.”
(2) Philippine Star: Redundancy and bad phrasingPhl lacks equipment, trained personnel to address fallout
MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine government lacks sufficient equipment and facilities to cope with widespread nuclear fallout in the country, an official revealed yesterday.
While government officials announced the activation of the National Radiological Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan (RADPLAN), few details on the plan and exactly how it would be implemented were revealed to the public.
There was no mention of the availability or the setting up of containment/isolation facilities available to the public, except some advisories on how Filipinos should cope in the event of a nuclear emergency. These facilities are intended for those suspected or found to have been exposed to high levels of radiation.
The lead sentence of the news story above has fallen prey to a very common mistake of news reporters: erroneously combining the verb “lack” and the adjective “sufficient” as a modifier. The result is, of course, an ugly redundancy—with “sufficient” as the redundant element in the phrase “lacks sufficient equipment and facilities.”
See how smooth that sentence looks and reads without that redundant word:
“The Philippine government
lacks equipment and facilities to cope with widespread nuclear fallout in the country, an official revealed yesterday.”
That sentence, of course, has these three semantically equivalent constructions:
(a) “The Philippine government
has inadequate equipment and facilities to cope with widespread nuclear fallout in the country, an official revealed yesterday.”
(b) “The Philippine government
has insufficient equipment and facilities to cope with widespread nuclear fallout in the country, an official revealed yesterday.”
(c) “The Philippine government
does not have enough equipment and facilities to cope with widespread nuclear fallout in the country, an official revealed yesterday.”
(3) Philippine Star: Missing attributive pronoun; misplaced modifying clause Webb files false testimony raps vs Alfaro
MANILA, Philippines - Acquitted rape-slay convict Hubert Webb filed false testimony charges yesterday against government star witness Jessica Alfaro for allegedly lying in court and sealing his conviction and five other scions of wealthy families for the 1991 Vizconde massacre.
In a 45-page complaint, Webb sued Alfaro for offering false testimony against a defendant, which under Article 180 of the Revised Penal Code is punishable with six to 12 years’ imprisonment because the accused were meted life sentences.
In the lead sentence above, the phrase “sealing his conviction and five other scions of wealthy families” is grammatically wrong because of (1) the use of the slippery word “sealing” and (2) the missing attributive pronoun phrase “that of,” which should precede the noun phrase “five other scions of wealthy families” to put it in the possessive form and make that phrase parallel with the noun phrase “his conviction.” Because of this, the phrase yields the wrong sense that what was sealed along with Hubert Webb’s conviction were the “five other scions of wealthy families” themselves, not their conviction for the same crime.
Here’s that sentence as corrected to convey the correct sense:
“Acquitted rape-slay convict Hubert Webb filed false testimony charges yesterday against government star witness Jessica Alfaro for allegedly lying in court,
an act that Webb said led to his conviction and that of five other scions of wealthy families for the 1991 Vizconde massacre.”
To make the sense of the sentence clear and unmistakable, I replaced the entire additive phrase “sealing his conviction and five other scions of wealthy families for the 1991 Vizconde massacre” with this phrase: “an act that Webb said led to his conviction and that of five other scions of wealthy families for the 1991 Vizconde massacre.” Note that in this rephrasing, I used the noun “act” to precede a “that”-subordinate clause. That word is a grammatical device known as the
summative modifier, which is a new word or phrase that sums up a core idea of the preceding clause, then makes that word or phrase the thematic subject of succeeding relative clauses. As we can see, using the noun “act” as summative modifier effectively straightened out the messy and confusing state of affairs of the original sentence.
Now, in the second sentence of that lead passage above, the faulty construction of the sentence makes it appear that it’s the defendant, not the crime, that’s punishable with six to 12 years’ imprisonment under Article 180 of the Revised Penal Code. This is because the noun “defendant” gets in the way of the true subject, “offering false testimony,” that should logically be modified by the relative clause “which under Article 180 of the Revised Penal Code is punishable with six to 12 years’ imprisonment…”
This misplacement of the modifying clause is admittedly a tough nut to crack, one that wouldn’t yield to the usual simple repositioning of grammatical elements. But the summative modifier—the same grammatical device that I used earlier in the rewrite of the lead sentence above—is also an excellent fix for such complicated grammatical situations. For the sentence in question here, in particular, I would suggest the word “offense.”
Let’s see how “offense” works as a summative modifier for that sentence:
“In a 45-page complaint, Webb sued Alfaro for offering false testimony against a defendant,
an offense punishable under Article 180 of the Revised Penal Code with six to 12 years’ imprisonment because the accused were meted life sentences.”
In the same way that the summative modifier “act” worked so well for the reconstructed lead sentence above, the use of “offense” as summative modifier for the second problematic sentence has effectively straightened and clarified its semantics.
(For those who want to learn more about summative modifiers, my book
Give Your English the Winning Edge discusses it and various other grammatical devices for avoiding sprawl and information in extended sentences.)
(4) Manila Bulletin: Missing attributive pronoun; wrong choice of relative pronoun Jeepney engine replacement program set
MANILA, Philippines – The Board of Investments (BoI) is creating a task force composed of motor vehicle manufacturers to provide the most affordable brand new engines that would replace the dilapidated jeepneys plying the country’s roads.
BoI managing head Cristino L. Panlilio said that Isuzu Philippines Corp. has the capability to provide power trains which would include the transmission and axles.
He, however, said that duty-free imports could also be an option from Asean as well as from China, if that is possible for this project only.
As in the case of the problem with the
Philippine Star sentence in Item 3 above, the lead sentence above suffers from the absence of the attributive pronoun phrase “those of.” This time, “those of” must precede the phrase “the dilapidated jeepneys plying the country’s roads” to put it in possessive form and make it parallel with the antecedent noun phrase “brand new engine.” Without the pronoun “those,” the erroneous sense is conveyed that brand new engines will replace the dilapidated jeepneys themselves, not their old engines.
See how the presence of “those” effectively fixes the problem in that sentence:
“The Board of Investments (BoI) is creating a task force composed of motor vehicle manufacturers to provide the most affordable brand new engines
that would replace those of the dilapidated jeepneys plying the country’s roads.”
Even better and clearer is to categorically use the noun phrase “old engines” instead of the pronoun “those”:
“The Board of Investments (BoI) is creating a task force composed of motor vehicle manufacturers to provide the most affordable brand-new engines
that would replace the old engines of the dilapidated jeepneys plying the country’s roads.”
Finally, as to the second sentence of the lead passage above, the relative pronoun “which” is wrongly used in the subordinate clause “which would include the transmission and axles.” That clause being restrictive or essential, it should be introduced by the restrictive relative pronoun “that” instead, as follows:
“BoI managing head Cristino L. Panlilio said that Isuzu Philippines Corp. has the capability to provide power trains that would include the transmission and axles.”
(5) Manila Bulletin: Convoluted construction of sentencesLeyte, Bohol village under state of calamity; toll rises
MANILA, Philippines — A state of calamity has been declared in Leyte and a village in Bohol due to flashfloods that hit parts of the Visayas and Mindanao that has killed at least 11 people and forcing more than 14,000 people to flee their homes.
Aside from Leyte, more than 13,000 people have been displaced, also placed under a state of calamity was Balbalan village in Dimiao town. Reports said the village remained submerged in floodwaters as of press time.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said flashfloods, pockets of landslides, and tornado brought about by continuous rains being experienced in the Visayas and some parts of Mindanao had affected 3,130 families or 15,398 people, out of which 2,878 families or 14,138 people are now temporarily housed in different evacuation centers.
The three sentences of the lead passage above are extremely convoluted, making what they intend to say very difficult to grasp.
In the first sentence, the consecutive string of relative “that”-clauses—“that hit parts of the Visayas and Mindanao” and “that has killed at least 11 people…” make for very awkward reading. Even worse, the second relative clause, “that has killed at least 11 people…”, can’t do its modification job properly because it can’t grammatically connect to “flashfloods,” the noun it’s supposed to modify. These problems, however, can be fixed by simply converting the last relative clause, “that killed at least 11 people…”, into a phrase in progressive form, “killing at least 11 people…”
As to the second sentence, it’s a run-on sentence that strings up ideas in grammatically faulty and semantically confusing ways. It needs major restructuring.
Then the third sentence misuses the tenses, improperly mixing the progressive tense “being experienced” with the past perfect “had affected.” Since the two actions are simultaneous, the latter verb should also be in the progressive form, “are being affected.”
So here’s that passage as corrected and fine-tuned grammatically and structurally:
MANILA, Philippines — A state of calamity has been declared in Leyte and a village in Bohol due to flashfloods that hit parts of the Visayas and Mindanao, killing at least 11 people and forcing more than 14,000 people to flee their homes.
Aside from Leyte where more than 13,000 people have been displaced, Balbalan village in Dimiao town was also placed under a state of calamity. Reports said the village remained submerged in floodwaters as of press time.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) said flashfloods, pockets of landslides, and tornado brought about by continuous rains being experienced in the Visayas and some parts of Mindanao are affecting 3,130 families or 15,398 people, out of which 2,878 families or 14,138 people are now temporarily housed in different evacuation centers.
(6) Manila Bulletin: Extreme information overload in a sentenceNFA assures flood-hit Caraga region of enough rice supply
BUTUAN CITY, Philippines — Due to fear of rice shortage following the devastating effects of the floods that struck the farmlands of thousands of farmers in various areas in the Caraga region in January and February this year, officials of the National Food Authority (NFA) assured Caraganons Friday of enough rice stock as more than 835,000 bags of rice are currently stocked in various warehouses spread all over the region.
The bags of rice do not even include the 107,824 bags of “palay” that are also currently deposited in 14 warehouses strategically located in the four provinces and three cities in the Caraga region, said Region XIII NFA Regional Director Javier P. Lozada Jr.
“We have sufficient stocks of rice and Caraganons have nothing to worry about,” Lozada said in an interview.
The lead sentence in the above news story suffers from extreme information overload and in heavily convoluted form at that, making the sentence insufferably difficult to read and understand. Worse, this readability and comprehension problem is compounded by the delayed appearance of both subject and operative verb by as much as 34 words deep into the sentence.
Such sentences should be simplified into easier-to-digest chunks of information, as in this suggested major rewrite:
“To allay fears of a rice shortage, National Food Authority (NFA) officials assured Caraganons Friday of enough rice stock by informing them that more than 835,000 bags of rice are currently stocked in various warehouses spread all over the region.
“The NFA made the announcement following the devastating effects of the floods that struck farmlands of thousands of farmers in the Caraga region in January and February this year.”
(7) The Manila Times: Wrong tense for main verbs working with a helping verbUS rewards Sayyaf informants with $70,000
ZAMBOANGA CITY: The United States on Friday rewarded some $70,000 to Filipino informants who helped local troops tracked down and eventually killed a wanted Abu Sayyaf militant linked to the spate of terrorism and kidnappings of American citizens in the Philippines, officials said.
Officials said that Filipino troops had killed the militant, Suhod Tanad¬jalin, in a raid last month in his hideout in Tuburan town in Basilan province.
In the first sentence of the lead passage above, both the main verbs “tracked down” and “killed” have wrongly taken the past tense along with their common helping verb “helped.” This is a serious violation of this basic rule in English grammar: When a main verb is used together with a helping verb, it is the helping verb that takes the tense; the main verb takes its bare infinitive form (the infinitive without the “to”).
That sentence should therefore be corrected as follows:
“The United States on Friday rewarded some $70,000 to Filipino informants
who helped local troops track down and eventually kill a wanted Abu Sayyaf militant linked to the spate of terrorism and kidnappings of American citizens in the Philippines, officials said.”
(
Philippine Star: Grammatically and semantically defective phraseDPWH renews appeal for 2,000 families to leave condemned tenement
MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) yesterday reiterated its appeal to some 2,000 families living in a tenement in Tondo, Manila to vacate the building after it has been condemned for the last five years.
DPWH-National Capital Region (NCR) Director Reynaldo Tagudando, who visited the Vitas Tenement Housing, said the National Housing Authority (NHA) built the building in 1965, and in 2006 or 2007, the DPWH already condemned it for its weak structure. “We told them that it was not safe,” Tagudando said.
In the lead sentence of the news story above, the prepositional phrase “after it has been condemned for the last five years” is grammatically and semantically defective, for it gives the false impression that the act of condemnation has been ongoing for the last five years. The correct sense is, of course, that the tenement was condemned five years ago, and that the condemnation was a one-time DPWH action that has been ignored by the residents to this day.
Here’s a rewrite of that sentence that captures this sense correctly:
“The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) yesterday reiterated its appeal to some 2,000 families living in a tenement in Tondo, Manila, to vacate the building,
which was condemned as unsafe for habitation as early as five years ago.”
