You’re absolutely right, maxsims: “Writing can be grammatically perfect but still fail to answer the deadliest question in the English language: What does it mean?” As you know very well, this is because writing isn’t just vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and sentence structure. Those are just the bare-bones foundations of writing; they need to be mastered, of course, but they can’t guarantee good writing. Good writing is a much more exacting discipline, a heightened quality of mind and thought, a demanding art form like good architecture and good music. The raw materials may be there, like steel beams, concrete, and wood for structures, or notes and lyrics for a song or a concerto, but the builder must still build the structure, the singer must still sing the song, or the orchestra must still perform the concerto. In writing, too, the final measure is the quality of the performance—the clarity and readability of the written work.
So, when I said in my earlier posting that the four major Metro Manila broadsheets were remarkably free of notable grammar and semantic errors, I wasn’t commenting on the quality of their writing at all. Far from it. The tentative clean bill of health I gave was only for their English grammar and syntax, not for the accuracy, clarity, and readability of their reporting; I can only do so much in My Media English Watch. My critiques are focused primarily on news stories, feature articles, and opinion pieces whose English grammar and syntax I find wanting; indeed, they totally ignore the better written or excellent narrative or expository pieces produced by those broadsheets from day to day.
Of course, it’s greatly to be desired for the written output of these broadsheets to be not only totally free of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax errors but also to be scrupulously clear, accurate, and readable. That, however, is the responsibility of the writers and their editors themselves. They owe it to their readers. However, we must also be mindful of this limitation of newspaper journalism: it is writing history or literature in a hurry. We therefore can only hope that the newspaper writers and editors would exert greater efforts to achieve not only good English but good writing as well.
Now to answer your specific questions about the journalistic prose you listed:
Sentence 1: “Government troops killed at least six Abu Sayyaf militants, including their leader, who is one of those most wanted by the United States for terrorism, in fierce clashes Sunday in Sulu province in southern Mindanao, officials told The Manila Times on Sunday."
Your comment: “..at least six...”? Don’t the government troops know? After all, six is not a huge number, and, you would expect, easily confirmed. And talk about a plethora of proper nouns in one sentence!
My reply: Having briefly covered the military beat myself during my newspaper days, I know that reporters have to rely largely on the military’s pronouncements on such matters as the number of casualties in battle. The enterprising or intrepid reporter may choose to go to the battlefield to verify the numbers, or perhaps check with the other side of the conflict, but that would be a foolhardy thing to do if the hostilities are still raging. For day-to-day news reporting, it’s therefore much wiser to rely on the military’s figures and just to make sure that the claims are properly attributed.
As to the “plethora of proper nouns in one sentence,” it’s par for the course in journalistic reporting. Armchair grammarians can complain against them to high heavens every day, but what I know is that the typical reporter is under great pressure to deliver the four W’s and the H of the news in the lead sentence of the story. Under less punitive circumstances, however, the same reporter may be able to come up with a news feature or straight feature where that “plethora of proper nouns in one sentence” is more evenly distributed in the course of the narrative, but then that’s another story altogether.
Sentence 2: “A major seafarers’ group has scored the Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) for the agency’s failure to plug loopholes in maritime safety enforcement in the Philippines, saying that most of the memorandums it has issued were meant to put the blame for the disasters on others.”
Your comment: Unless Filipinos have an idiomatic definition of "scored" (criticised?), this sentence makes no sense. Also, can you have loopholes in safety enforcement....or is it the legislation he should be referring to?
My reply: Yes, for good or bad, Philippine journalism has a strong predilection to use the verb “scored” for “criticized.” However, my digital Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines “score” as “berate,” “scold,” also “denounce” (Def. 3), so I think we have to let things be.
As to your second question, I don’t know the answer. In any case, we are dealing with an attributed paraphrase of a statement and the standard rule in journalism is not to fudge that statement even if its logic is not totally airtight.
Sentence 3: “The Philippine central bank has approved a multi-million dollar borrowing by a private consortium that is building power plants to mitigate an electricity shortfall in the country’s central regions comprising the Visayas.”
Your comment: The “Philippine central bank” sounds like a commercial entity to me and thus should be accorded the caps due to proper nouns. I am uncertain of the geography here, but are the Visayas the only areas that make up the central regions?
My reply: I agree with you that “Philippine central bank” sounds like a commercial entity and is better accorded the caps due to proper nouns, but there really is no such entity in the Philippines. The official name of its central bank is the Tagalog term “Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas,” and its direct translation should really be “Central Bank of the Philippines.” In English-language reporting, therefore, it has become standard for Philippine media to use the more straightforward “Philippine central bank,” using lower-case letters for “central” and “bank.” I really see no problem with that.
Geographically speaking, yes, the Visayas does constitute the country’s central region. I must acknowledge, though, that the use of “central” in this context in that sentence doesn’t sit in well with the use of “central” in the context of the “Philippine central bank” earlier in that sentence. It dangerously gives the wrong impression that the “Philippine central bank” is meant to service the “central regions” of the Philippines and not the Philippines as a whole. Perhaps it would have been semantically safer to avoid using the word “central” in the relative clause of that sentence, as in this reconstruction: “The Philippine central bank has approved a multi-million dollar borrowing by a private consortium that is building power plants to mitigate an electricity shortfall in the regions comprising the Visayan islands.” More concise, clearer—and more accurate.
Sentence 4: “‘This is going to be used to address the growing demand for electricity as well as the possible energy problem in the area,’ Guinigundo said.”
Your comment: If the possible energy problem is not the same as the growing demand for electricity, then what is the possible energy problem?
My reply: When I was a newspaperman, I learned not to argue with the logic of direct quotes like this; I was taught to allow for a little superfluity in words for the sake of cogency or local color. I think that reasonable prescription still applies to this day.
Sentence 5: “On January 25, the Luzon grid suffered from rotating brownouts as a number of privatized power plants underwent maintenance all at the same time.”
Your comment: All at the same time?
My reply: That’s what happened, as far as I can gather—hence the pesky rotating brownouts in Luzon. (Based on the latest news, though, relief is already in sight.)
Sentence 6: "The Visayas is already enduring a supply shortfall, while the Mindanao grid may plunge in darkness as the region sources most of its electricity from hydro facilities."
Your comment: It’s not the grid that will plunge into darkness, it’s the long-suffering customers! Also, the sentence obscures the cause and effect explanation by using “...as the region...” instead of “because the region...”
Again, I am unsure of the geography, but is not Visayas a plural?
My reply: You are right that strictly speaking, it’s not the grid that will plunge into darkness, but neither will it be “the long-suffering customers” that will plunge into darkness. By definition, the noun “grid” means “a network of conductors for distribution of electric power,” but it has become idiomatic in Philippine journalism to use the term “grid” for the area covered by the electric-power distribution network itself. I really don’t see much problem with the semantics of that term; in fact, it helps simply exposition.
I also agree with you that “because” would be a better subordinating conjunction than “as” in that sentence, and I would wholeheartedly recommend the use of “because” in most other sentences of that kind. In journalism, however, the use of “as” for cause-and-effect” is so heavily favored by reporters and editors—it's perceived as more professional and cosmopolitan—that it would probably take a deluge or a perpetual power outage to make them shift to “because.”
The term “Visayas” is a singular collective noun that refers to the Visayan Islands. It is correctly used in the singular in that sentence, but it can also be both notionally and grammatically plural, as in “The Visayas consist of the islands of…”
