SHORT TAKES IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:(1) Manila Bulletin: Badly constructed, disorganized, and incoherent lead passage Hanjin gets $4.8-B ship contracts
SUBIC BAY FREEPORT, Philippines – Around 56 ships worth $4.8 billion in total has been ordered to Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction – Philippines (HHIC-Phil) that will be built inside its Subic shipyard in Redondo Peninsula.
Hanjin General Manager for External Business Tae Kyun Yoo said most of the 56 vessels will be bulk carriers as most of the shipping companies ordered 36 of them while the remaining 20 vessels are composed of 14 container ships and six tankers.
We have here a very badly constructed and incoherent lead sentence, followed by a seriously convoluted, disorganized, and mixed up run-on sentence that borders on incomprehensibility. It’s evident that the writer of that news story is not knowledgeable with the mechanics of English phrasing and sentence construction, and that the paper’s desk editor had allowed the error-laden manuscript to pass without any editing at all.
As practically all parts of the passage are grammatically faulty, I’ll dissect only one part of it for instruction purposes: the noun clause “around 56 ships worth $4.8 billion in total has been ordered,” which suffers from a subject-verb disagreement error. The operative subject of that clause is, of course, the nominal phrase “around 56 ships worth $4.8 billion in total.” Now the question is: Is that nominal phrase singular or plural? That will depend on whether its
head noun is singular or plural, which in turn will determine whether the verb in that clause should be singular or plural. By inspection, we find that the head noun of that nominal phrase is not “$4.8 billion” nor “total” but “56 ships,” which is obviously plural. This means that the verb shouldn’t be in the singular form “has been ordered” but in the plural form “have been ordered” instead.
Now let me attempt to reorganize and fine-tune that seriously troubled news passage to make sense of it:
SUBIC BAY FREEPORT, Philippines – Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction Philippines (HHIC-Phil) has received a total order of 56 ships worth $4.8 billion and will be building them inside its Subic shipyard in Redondo Peninsula.
Tae Kyun Yoo, Hanjin general manager for external business, said the orders consist of 36 bulk carriers, 14 container ships, and six tankers.
(2) GMA News Online: Dangling modifying phrase; rickety story developmentLanterns fill UP night sky for a cause
Taking a cue from the Disney animated movie “Tangled,” lanterns illuminated the night sky over the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman Sunken Garden on Wednesday, because of “Feu de Sororite: Lantern for a Cause," an event organized by the UP Phi Delta Alpha Sorority.
Sorority Lady Chancellor Saerom Kim said that the event was supposed to be a low-key event for sorority members where they would release 54 lanterns to mark their 54th anniversary.
But Facebook had a different plan, that the number of lanterns ballooned to more than 150. “We posted the event on Facebook and we got [confirmations of attendance] from different people," she said.
The above passage is very badly written and badly edited, one that suffers from a dangling modifying phrase right at the outset; a grammatical disconnect in the first sentence between the main clause and its “because” clause; a faulty relative clause in the second paragraph; and a lurching narrative discontinuity between the second and third paragraphs.
(a) Dangling modifying phrase – In the first sentence, the participial modifying phrase “taking a cue from the Disney animated movie ‘Tangled’” dangles because it couldn’t logically modify any subject in the main clause. The writer evidently thought that the noun “lanterns” is that subject, but this isn’t logically and semantically possible because being inanimate, “lanterns” couldn’t possibly take a cue from anything; only humans and trained animals could do that, and there’s no indication in the sentence that there are any around to do that.
(b) Grammatical disconnect – The subordinate clause “because of ‘Feu de Sororite: Lantern for a Cause,’ an event organized by the UP Phi Delta Alpha Sorority” doesn’t connect logically with the main clause in that first sentence. That event did not cause the lanterns to illuminate the night sky over UP on that day; the lanterns rising to and illuminating the night sky over UP on that day was the event itself.
(c) Faulty relative clause – Because of faulty sentence construction, the relative clause “where they would release 54 lanterns to mark their 54th anniversary” modifies a wrong subject (“sorority members”) instead of the correct one (“low-key event”). The use of the relative pronoun “where” is also erroneous; the grammatically correct linkage is “in which.”
(d) Lurching narrative discontinuities – The narrative is that passage is marked by lurching discontinuities. New ideas with no correlation with the preceding sentences just pop out of the blue, like the idea in the third paragraph that “Facebook had a different plan,” which in itself is an absurd idea even as a figurative statement. As every Facebook denizen knows, Facebook absolutely doesn’t and can’t do any event planning of that sort for its members.
Here’s my attempt to straighten out that passage and infuse narrative continuity into it:
Reminiscent of the picturesque lantern releasing scene in the Disney animated movie “Tangled,” over 150 lanterns illuminated the night sky over the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman Sunken Garden during the “Feu de Sororite: Lantern for a Cause” festivities held last Wednesday by the UP Phi Delta Alpha Sorority.
Sorority Lady Chancellor Saerom Kim said they had planned to hold just a low-key event in which sorority members would release only a total of 54 lanterns to mark their sorority’s 54th anniversary. But she said that when they announced the holding of the event on Facebook, many other people decided to join, thus bringing the number of balloons released that night to more than 150.
(3) ABS-CBN News Online: Semantically defective phrasePinoy nurses and call center agents needed in Germany
MANILA, Philippines – There is a demand in some parts of Germany for nurses and caretakers because of the rising population of the country’s elderly.
New ambassador to Germany Maria Cleofe Natividad said that her priority is increasing the job and investment opportunities for Filipinos.
The noun phrase “the rising population of the country’s elderly” is semantically defective. The noun “population” means “the total of individuals occupying an area or making up a whole” or “a body of persons or individuals having a quality or characteristic in common.” For this reason, it is incorrect to use the word “population” in the sense of being possessed by the “country’s elderly,” for the simple reason that they are the ones that comprise that “population.” The grammatically and semantically correct phrasing is “the country’s rising elderly population,” where “population” is qualified by “rising elderly” as an adjective.
Here then is that problematic lead sentence as corrected:
“There is a demand in some parts of Germany for nurses and caretakers because of
the country’s rising elderly population.”
(4) The Manila Times: Vague, slippery phrasingRemittances defy overseas gloom
MONEY sent home by Filipinos working abroad continued to improve in May despite the uncertainties overseas, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said Friday.
In a statement, BSP Gov. Amando Tetangco Jr. said remittances coursed through banks reached $7.9 billion in the first five months of the year, up 6.2 percent from the year-ago $7.4 billion.
The expression “money sent home…continued to improve” in the lead sentence above sounds inappropriate or at least semantically slippery. It might be deep jargon in financial circles, one that I think most newspaper readers would find baffling. It would be much clearer and accurate to say “money sent home…continued to increase.”
It’s evident, of course, that the reporter used that expression by way of paraphrase because she didn’t want to preempt the wording used by the BSP governor’s statement in the next paragraph. However, a paraphrase would be called for only if it simplifies or clarifies the statement, not becloud it.
With simplicity and clarity in mind, here’s how I would have rendered that lead sentence:
“
Even more money was sent home in May by Filipinos working abroad despite the uncertainties overseas, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said Friday.”
Here’s an even better version:
“
Filipinos working abroad sent home even more money in May despite the uncertainties overseas, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said Friday.”
(5) The Manila Times: Wrong tense usageNew leptospirosis type turns up, kills 4 in Zamboanga
THE Department of Health on Friday announced that a new strain of leptospirosis broke out in a town in Zamboanga.
Health Secretary Enrique Ona in a press conference said that the new case of leptospirosis had already killed four people out of 20 cases recorded in the past two months in the town of Sibuco.
“This [new leptospiroris strain] is different from the common leptospirosis,” Ona said.
He added that the victims from Zamboanga are afflicted with numbness and weakening of lower extremities that differentiate it from common leptospirosis.
The lead sentence above misuses the past tense “broke out.” Following the normal sequence of tenses rule for reported speech, that verb should be in the past-perfect tense “had broken out” instead. We will recall that the rule provides that if the reporting verb is in the past tense (“announced” in this case), the operative verb in the reported statement moves one tense back (from “broke out” to “had broken out”). That lead sentence should therefore be corrected as follows:
“The Department of Health on Friday announced that
a new strain of leptospirosis had broken out in a town in Zamboanga.”
Here’s another version that neatly skirts the normal sequence of tenses rule by nominalizing (converting to a noun) the verb “break out”:
“The Department of Health on Friday announced
a breakout of a new strain of leptospirosis in a town in Zamboanga.”
(6) The Philippine Star: Misuse of coordinating conjunctionStorm ‘Hanna’ exits Philippines
MANILA, Philippines - Tropical depression “Hanna” has left the Philippine area of responsibility as it is expected to merge with another typhoon in Japan, the state of the weather bureau said.
The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said that as of 10 a.m. today, the storm was moving faster at 24 kilometers per hour toward Okinawa, Japan.
Because it misuses the coordinating conjunction “as” in the phrase “as it is expected,” the lead sentence above creates the eerie feeling that tropical depression “Hanna” is capable of rational thought like a human being, so keen on not missing a rendezvous with a fellow typhoon in Japan that it leaves the Philippine area of responsibility right on the appointed time. That flawed sentence will yield the correct sense of a typhoon as an unthinking natural phenomenon by simply replacing the coordinating phrase “as it” with “and,” as follows:
“Tropical depression ‘Hanna’ has left the Philippine area of responsibility and is expected to merge with another typhoon in Japan, the state of the weather bureau said.”
(7) Manila Bulletin: Factually wrong headline Fire destroys post office building
MANILA, Philippines — The fourth floor of the Philippine Postal Office in Manila was severely damaged when a fire hit it the other night.
Initial investigation showed that the fire started at 10 p.m. at the 4th floor or the records section of the Regional Postal Office in Plaza Lawton, Manila.
Before the incident, the security guard of the post office told arson investigators that he was told by the three stay-in employees that smoke was billowing from the fourth floor.
The headline of the story above is factually wrong. As the lead sentence itself shows, there was severe damage to the fourth floor of the central postal office, but this is certainly not the same as the post office building being destroyed by the fire. A more factual, truthful word for what happened to it is “damaged,” as follows:
Fire damages post office building(8 ) Manila Bulletin: Dangerously wrong choice of nounPolice intensify integrated patrol system
MANILA, Philippines — Northern Police District (NPD) director Chief Supt. Antonio L. Decano urged Friday the four police station chiefs in his jurisdiction to intensify the Police Integrated Patrol System (PIPS) in their continued effort to stamp out criminals.
Decano ordered the mobilization of all anti-crime units in the entire CAMANAVA (Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas, Valenzuela) area to eradicate crimes, including robbery-holdups perpetrated by criminals riding in tandem on motorcycles.
The noun phrase “their continued effort to stamp out criminals” is sure to send shivers down the spine of criminals and raise a howl among human rights activists. This is because “to stamp out” means “to extinguish or destroy by or as if by stamping with the foot.” In civilized societies, however, police are mandated to stamp out criminality, not the criminals themselves. Criminals, even if caught in the act, are supposed to be given due process and are to be presumed innocent until proven guilty by the courts.
That sentence should therefore be corrected as follows:
“Northern Police District (NPD) director Chief Supt. Antonio L. Decano urged Friday the four police station chiefs in his jurisdiction to intensify the Police Integrated Patrol System (PIPS)
in their continued effort to stamp out criminality.”
