Should they have been circumvented?

[Miss Mae]

While WLP is just developing in the country, PSTD Board of Trustee and PSTD Academy Chairman Fe Marie Cabantac said the Philippines has the potential to become the training destination in the region because of competent Filipino trainers and world-class facilities.

I really wonder how often writers should specify.

[Joe Carillo]

Writers should be specific enough by providing just the right amount of detail. They obviously should avoid excessive repetition or outright redundancy, which could be as distracting as inadequate detail. In the case of the sentence you presented, the repeated use of the acronym “PSTD” and the use of the two position titles definitely go overboard and could grate on the nerves of readers. This often happens when a press release is crafted by people who are too eager to please the subject of the release; there is then an inordinate focus on the position and qualifications of the subject. Of course, newspaper editors are supposed to routinely curb the excess or needless verbiage that results from such eagerness, but sometimes they simply get too busy or too lax to cut down press releases to size.

[Miss Mae]

What can be done about these?

[Joe Carillo]

To avoid overloading the sentence, use only the position most relevant to the statement. In this particular case, “PSTD Academy Chairman” looks like it; “PSTD Board of Trustee,” which is a more internal designation, can be dropped and maybe mentioned later in the story.

“While WLP is just developing in the country, PSTD Academy Chairman Fe Marie Cabantac said the Philippines has the potential to become the training destination in the region because of competent Filipino trainers and world-class facilities.”

[Miss Mae]

Okay. I thought the writer must have just conjoined the positions as in While WLP is just developing in the country, PSTD Board of Trustee and Academy Chairman Fe Marie Cabantac said the Philippines has the potential to become the training destination in the region because of competent Filipino trainers and world-class facilities.