(Continued from preceding panel)(5) Philippine Star: Confusing sentence due to faulty phrasing and constructionFaith healer shot dead in Pangasinan
MANILA, Philippines - Two gunmen shot dead a female faith healer while conducting a faith healing ritual in Bayambang town, Pangasinan province, police reported today.
Police said Mary Grace Tan, 44, of Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur, died from multiple gunshot wounds in the body.
The lead sentence above suffers from (1) the improper use and awkward positioning of the adverb “dead” after the verb “shot,” and from (2) a subordinate clause that points to a wrong antecedent subject. The form “shot dead” normally works well only in passive-voice sentence constructions, as in “A female faith healer was shot dead by…”, and sounds very awkward in the active-voice, as we can see in the lead sentence in question here.
Also, the faulty construction of the subordinate clause “while conducting a faith healing ritual…” gives the distinct but wrong sense that it was the two gunmen who were conducting the faith healing ritual. Due to the faulty syntax, therefore, the doer of the action in that subordinate clause isn’t clear.
A quick and very effective fix for this problem is to use a pronoun in the subordinate clause that
clearly points to the correct antecedent noun in the main clause, as follows:
“Two gunmen
shot and killed a female faith healer while she was conducting a faith healing ritual in Bayambang town, Pangasinan province, police reported today.”
(6) Manila Bulletin: Faulty semantics due to wrong choice of wordsTransfer of ARMM seat pushed
COTABATO CITY, Philippines – The governance of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is now bent finally on transferring its regional seat to Parang, Maguindanao from this city – its temporary seat for the past 20 years.
ARMM Executive Secretary Naguib Sinarimbo said the ARMM’s Regional Planning and Development Office has been directed to chart the requirements and mechanisms for the development of a prospected site in Parang, a coastal town hosting the Polloc Freeport and the Regional Police Office headquarters.
The lead sentence above is nonsensical because it has made wrong word choices for both its subject—“governance” for “government”—and its verb—“is now bent finally” for “has finally firmed up its decision.” The noun “governance” is the concept of the act of governing while “government” is the entity that does the governing. What this means, of course, is that using the word “governance” in this case is wrong because it can’t be a legitimate doer of the action of the verb.
Here then is that faulty sentence as corrected:
“
The government of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM)
has finally firmed up its decision to transfer its regional seat to Parang, Maguindanao from this city – its temporary seat for the past 20 years.”
(7) The Manila Times: Faulty and awkward sentence constructions; improper phrasing; use of wrong tense for the verbDengue triggers calamity
VIGAN CITY, Ilocos Sur: With eight reported fatalities, 1,169 casualties hospitalized and a surge in numbers of dengue victims in this province prompted local officials to declare the province under a state of calamity.
Latest reports noted that eight dengue deaths were from Santo Domingo – 1 dengue fatality; Cabugao – 3 fatalities; Santa Lucia – 2 fatalities; Santa Cruz – 1 fatality; and Narvacan – 1 fatality.
To address the dengue outbreak, Ilocos Sur provincial board members had passed to a man Resolution No. 113 series of 2011 last Monday, August 1, 2011 declaring Ilocos Sur under state of calamity due to dengue outbreak.
The lead sentence above is constructed improperly. It starts with a longwinded prepositional phrase that, not even bothering to establish a proper subject, just lumbers on to its very last word. In short, it’s a nonsensical nonsentence. From the facts at hand, of course, the subject of that sentence should logically be any of these three: “local officials,” “dengue outbreak,” or “state of calamity.”
Then the sentence in the third paragraph is semantically questionable and also grammatically faulty. It confusingly uses the highly figurative expression “passed to a man” for “passed unanimously”—a sudden shift from literal to figurative language that’s a big no-no in straight news reporting. Worse, it wrongly uses the past perfect tense for a verb that should be in the simple past tense, considering that the precise day of its occurrence is specified.
Here then is a suggested reconstruction of those two problematic sentences:
“VIGAN CITY, Ilocos Sur:
Local officials declared the province under a state of calamity due to a dengue outbreak that claimed eight reported fatalities and hospitalized 1,169 others.
***
“To address the dengue outbreak, Ilocos Sur provincial board members
unanimously passed Resolution No. 113, Series of 2011,
last August 1 declaring Ilocos Sur under a state of calamity.”
(8 ) The Manila Times: Semantically faulty sentence due to slipshod phrasing Fisherman fished out, 7 still missing
THE Philippine Coast Guard on Wednesday said that the agency has recovered another body of the reported eight missing fishermen off Masbate.
The body was fished out off Balud town in Masbate at about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Coast Guard is still looking for the seven other missing fishermen.
PCG search and rescue team recovered a total of 12 bodies since the search started.
The lead sentence above is grammatically and semantically faulty due to the slipshod wording of the verb phrase “has recovered another body of the reported eight missing fishermen off Masbate.” It gives the erroneous and absurd sense that “the reported eight missing fishermen” have several collective bodies, another of which had been recovered. Its use of the present perfect “has recovered” is also wrong; the correct tense is the past perfect “had recovered.” This is because in reported speech like that lead sentence, the verb in the reported utterance takes one tense back—“had recovered” in this case—when the reporting verb—“said” in this case—is in the simple past tense.
The sentence will yield the correct sense if that faulty phrase is reworded properly, as in the following rewrite:
“The Philippine Coast Guard on Wednesday said that the agency
had recovered the body of another of the eight missing fishermen reported missing off Masbate.”
(9) The Manila Times: Grammatically faulty sentence with irrelevant overtoneLibel suit vs. 94-year-old editor, publisher junked
BAGUIO CITY: A regional trial court here has junked the libel case filed against the country’s oldest editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper and her publisher.
In a 13-page decision, Regional Trial Court branch 61 Judge Antonio Reyes dismissed the libel case filed by Baguio finance officer Leticia Clemente against Baguio Midland Courier editor in chief Cecil Afable and her publisher and nephew, Charles Hamada.
Clemente sued the 94-year old Afable and Hamada for the paper’s January 29, 2006 editorial that allegedly imputed that she was the one referred to as the lady finance officer who “accommodates two romances at the same time.”
I’m leery of the lead sentence above on two counts. First, I don’t think the advanced age of the accused is highly material to the regional trial court’s decision to junk the libel case, so it shouldn’t have been given that level of prominence in the news story. Second, the insertion of the qualifying phrase “the country’s oldest editor-in-chief” only serves to overload the noun phrase to the point of confusing the reader. Indeed, the long, overly modified noun phrase “the country’s oldest editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper and her publisher” gives the bizarre sense that the editor being referred to edited not only the weekly newspaper but her publisher as well.
Here’s how I would have worded that lead sentence to avoid its grammatical problems and get rid of its irrelevant overtone:
“BAGUIO CITY: The regional trial court has junked the libel case filed against
the editor in chief and publisher of a weekly newspaper here.
“In a 13-page decision, Regional Trial Court branch 61 Judge Antonio Reyes dismissed the libel case filed by Baguio finance officer Leticia Clemente against Baguio Midland Courier editor in chief Cecil Afable and her publisher and nephew, Charles Hamada.
Afable, 94, is the oldest editor of a weekly newspaper in the country.”
SHORT TAKE IN MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH:The Manila Times: “Historic” isn’t the same as “historical”Zubiri bled P2M monthly in poll protest
POLANGUI, Albay: Sen. Jinggoy Estrada revealed here that his colleague lawmaker Jose Miguel “Migz” Zubiri quit his post as he was beset with paying 600,000 a week or more than P2 million a month in the electoral protest he was embroiled.
Zubiri, whose mother is a native of Libon town in Albay also opted to resign from Senate on Wednesday to defend his family’s honor, dignity and integrity.
“Zubiri’s act was historical. He’s a very good example and must be emulated. He resigned from Senate because he doesn’t want to drag his name into a controversy. And money was a big driving factor as he was spending P600,000 a week or more than P2 million a month for the poll recount,” Estrada told The Manila Times.
Take a look at the first sentence of the third paragraph above: “Zubiri’s act was historical.” Is “historical” correct usage in that sentence, or should it be “historic” instead?
My
Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines the adjective “historical” in that context as “of, relating to, or having the character of history” and “famous in history” (in other words, things that happened in the past), and the adjective “historic” as “having great and lasting importance” (things that could either be of the present or of the past). There’s some semantic overlapping in the definitions of these two words, of course, such that anybody can easily mistake the other at the spur of the moment or in extemporaneous situations. But I do think that from a language standpoint, “historic” is the proper word in that statement and was, in fact, the word meant by the speaker but had inadvertently used “historical” for it instead.
In such situations, I think the astute reporter or editor wouldn’t immortalize the grammatical mistake by quoting the speaker verbatim. As a courtesy to the speaker and in the interest of good usage, he or she would paraphrase the phrase instead to reflect the proper usage, as in the following suggested revision of that third paragraph:
Estrada hailed Zubiri’s act as historic. “He’s a very good example and must be emulated,” Estrada told The Manila Times. “He resigned from Senate because he doesn’t want to drag his name into a controversy. And money was a big driving factor as he was spending P600,000 a week or more than P2 million a month for the poll recount.”