The good news is that the four major Metro Manila broadsheets hardly had any notable English grammar and usage errors during the past few days. The bad news is that I strained my eyes trying to find any syntax or semantic flaws instructive enough to discuss here. All I found, in fact, are the following two items whose prose styling and sentence construction can stand much improvement:
(1) Manila Bulletin: Overly extended position title ahead of the title holder’s nameVacate posts, envoys urged
Union of Foreign Service Office of the Department of Foreign Affairs (UNIFORS) president and Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Victoria Bataclan asked political ambassadors to voluntarily vacate their posts by the end of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s term on June 30 despite a Malacañang order to defer the recall of political ambassadors.
“With all due respect, time’s up,” Bataclan said. “Respectfully, we request our colleagues to join us and implement the Constitution and the law. All of us must follow the rule of law.”
In that lead sentence above, how did you feel reading the 18-word title preceding the name of the title holder? Flustered and terribly dizzy as if you just had a very rough ride? Well, it’s because when reading a sentence, the mind understandably finds it so bumpy to first negotiate a cavalcade of so many nouns before it can figure out the identity of the subject or doer of the action. There are seven such nouns and noun phrases in that sentence—“Union,” “Foreign Service Office,” “Department of Foreign Affairs,” “UNIFORS,” “president,” “Foreign Affairs,” and “Assistant Secretary”—all clamoring for their share of your mind before your eyes could finally latch on to the name “Victoria Bataclan.” Harrowing!
To make the reading of such titles an easier, more pleasant experience, it’s best to put the more relevant or important title ahead of the title holder’s name first, then to just let the less important or longer title or titles follow immediately afterwards. This is what I did in the following reconstruction of that lead sentence:
“Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Victoria Bataclan, who is also the president of the Union of Foreign Service Office of the Department of Foreign Affairs (UNIFORS), asked political ambassadors to voluntarily vacate their posts by the end of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s term on June 30 despite a Malacañang order to defer the recall of political ambassadors.”
I’m sure you found reading the sentence above more restful.
As to the second sentence, there’s really nothing grammatically wrong with it. Some readers just might find it somewhat awkward to hear the legalistic phrase “with all due respect” immediately followed by the adverb “respectfully.” But since it’s a direct quote, there’s not really much we can do about it; we just have to live with it. If I were the reporter, though, I would have paraphrased that statement to eliminate the accidental, not-so-pleasant rhyming of “with all due respect” and “respectfully.”
(2) Manila Bulletin: Overlayering of a sentence with prepositional “to”-phrasesGains toward quality education bared Friday
If the President has a State-of-the-Nation Address (SoNA), three government education agencies are also prepared to bare the report card of the country’s education sector at the 2010 Philippine Education Congress.
The education agencies – the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd), Technical Education Skills Development Authority (TESDA), and the Department of Education (DepEd) – comprise the Presidential Task Force for Education (PTFE) created by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2007.
They were tasked by the President to come up with the event to highlight the gains of the country’s thrusts toward improving the education sector to further encourage and inspire partners and stakeholders to help the government achieve its main objective of providing quality education for every Filipino.
We can gloss over the grammatically airtight first two paragraphs—I have included them in the quoted material only for context—and just focus our attention on the third. I am sure that like me, you found it so difficult to comprehend what that statement is saying. But why?
Well, it’s because that sentence is overlayered with as many as four prepositional “to”-phrases and two gerund phrases, all in relentless, uninterrupted succession. The prepositional “to”-phrases are, of course, (a) “to come up with the event,” (b) to highlight the gains of the country’s thrusts, (c) to further encourage and inspire partners and stakeholders, and (d) to help the government achieve it main objective…” The gerund phrases, on the other hand, are (a) “improving the education sector” and (b) providing quality of education for every Filipino.” This is no way to write a sentence if your objective is to be clearly understood.
Frankly, it’s difficult to fathom precisely what that statement really meant to say, but I will attempt to clarify it by chopping its overlapping ideas and condensing them into more comprehensible chunks. Here goes:
“They were tasked by the President to come up with the event that would highlight the country’s gains in its effort to provide quality education to every Filipino. The event should serve to further encourage and inspire partners and stakeholders to support the government in achieving this main objective.”
This is all I have for this week’s edition of My Media English Watch.
