Settling the often-derided usage of “celebrant” once and for all

Today, January 1, being the birthday of the Year 2011 in the Western world, perhaps it’s a good time to resolve the frequently derided usage of “celebrant” when referring to someone holding a birthday party or marking some other personal milestone. I know, of course, that most people think that “celebrant” is a wrong word choice and that “celebrator” is the only correct usage—but is this conventional wisdom really wise and sustainable?

I wrote an essay about the subject last July in my English-usage column for The Manila Times after attending a birthday party where someone who had called the birthday party host a “celebrant” was savagely if good-naturedly excoriated for his word choice. I thought of posting that essay, “No need to hold ‘celebrant’ in a straightjacket,” in this week’s edition of the Forum in the hope of helping settle this long-standing word-usage issue once and for all. 

I wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year! (January 1, 2011) 

No need to hold “celebrant” in a straightjacket

The Philippines being a predominantly Roman Catholic country, there’s a tendency for the supposedly English-savvy among us to scoff at people who describe as a “celebrant” someone celebrating a birthday or some other auspicious occasion. “Oh, no, that isn’t right!” they would often cut off and gleefully heckle the speaker. “The right word is ‘celebrator’; ‘celebrant’ means a priest officiating the Holy Mass!”

But are people who use the word “celebrant” in that context really wrong? Do they really deserve all that heckling?

Although I don’t usually join the wicked ribbing that often follows, I myself used to think that people who call birthday celebrators “birthday celebrants” are—if not actually unsavvy in their English—at least ill-advised in doing so. Indeed, my Merriam-Webster’s 11^th Collegiate Dictionary defines “celebrant” as “one who celebrates; specifically the priest officiating the Eucharist.” Likewise, the Collins English Dictionary—Complete and Unabridged defines “celebrant” as “a person participating in a religious ceremony” and, in Christianity’s ecclesiastical terms, as “an officiating priest, esp at the Eucharist.”

On the authority of these two dictionaries, I had never really bothered to check the validity of the conventional wisdom that anybody who’s not a priest or cleric should never be called a “celebrant” but only a “celebrator.” By “celebrator,” of course, practically everybody uses it in the context of someone observing or taking part in a notable occasion with festivities.

Recently, though, after witnessing yet another savage if good-natured ribbing of someone who used “celebrant” to describe the birthday party host, I decided that perhaps the issue was serious enough to look deeper into. I therefore resolved to check the usage with at least two other lexicographic authorities, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD).

The OED gives two definitions of “celebrant,” first as “a person who performs a rite, especially a priest at the Eucharist,” and, second, citing North American usage, as “a person who celebrates something.” For its part, the AHD primarily defines “celebrant” in essentially the same vein as the first OED definition, as (a) “A person who participates in a religious ceremony or rite”; (b) “A person who officiates at a religious or civil ceremony or rite, especially a wedding”; and (c) “In some Christian churches, the cleric officiating at the celebration of the Eucharist.” Like the OED, the AHD also makes a second definition of “celebrant” as “A participant in a celebration.”

Then the AHD goes one step further and makes the following usage note for “celebrant”: “Although ‘celebrant’ is most often used to describe an official participant in a religious ceremony or rite, a majority of the [AHD] Usage Panel accepted the use of ‘celebrant’ to mean ‘a participant in a celebration’ in an earlier survey. Still, while ‘New Year’s Eve celebrants’ may be an acceptable usage, ‘celebrator’ is an uncontroversial alternative in this more general sense.”

This being the case, I think people who use “celebrants” to describe people celebrating birthdays and other special occasions aren’t really wrong, and they certainly don’t deserve to be cut down and needled when using that word. And there’s no need for anyone to get upset either when called a “celebrant”—whether as principal or guest—during such occasions. I dare say that “celebrant” is as good a word as “celebrator” in such contexts, and except perhaps in the company of hidebound Christian fanatics, we need not hold the word “celebrant” in a straitjacket to describe only the Christian clergy doing their rituals.

In short, we can freely use “celebrators” to describe people celebrating or attending a birthday party or any other happy occasion, and I think the English-savvy among us need to get used to the idea that the usage of “celebrants” is actually par for the course and doesn’t deserve all that bashing as if it were bad English.  (July 3, 2010)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, July 3, 2010 © 2007 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Misuse of “lie” and “lay” punctures many writers’ command of English

In the English language, there are some sound-alike and spelled-alike verb pairs that often cause a lot of confusion, and the most troublesome of them is arguably the verb pair “lie” and “lay.” Indeed, who hasn’t been tripped yet by this treacherous verb pair? Over the years, I would often come across writing even by professionals—essays, business reports, position papers, news and feature stories—where “lie” is mistaken for “lay,” and vice versa. The semantic damage to the sentence might be slight, but the misuse of either word nevertheless shows a glaring hole in the writer’s command of English.

In a series of essays about vexing errors in English that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2007, I explained the grammatical reason behind the profound tendency of people to fumble when using “lie” and “lay.” I’m sure that reading the essay will clarify whatever doubts Forum members and guests might have about the usage of these two words, so I have decided to post that essay in this week’s edition of the Forum. (December 25, 2010)  

 

Why we often get into trouble using the verbs “lie” and “lay”

As I’m sure you must have already encountered in your own newspaper or magazine readings, some similar-sounding or somewhat similarly spelled pairs of verbs often get annoyingly misused because it’s not so easy to figure out whether they are being used intransitively or transitively. Among these verb-pairs, easily the most troublesome are the intransitive verb “lie,” which means to stay at rest horizontally, and the transitive “lay,” which means to put or set something down.

The intransitive “lie” is most commonly misused when it’s forced to function as a transitive verb in sentences like this one: “The ousted manager went to his office and laid on the couch.” The correct usage here is, of course, the intransitive past tense “lay”: “The ousted manager went to his office and lay on the couch.” On the other hand, the intransitive, past tense “lay down” is often mistakenly used in sentences like this: “The rebels surrendered and lay down their arms.” This time, the correct usage is the transitive, past-tense “laid down”: “The rebels surrendered and laid down their arms.”

Often, too, the intransitive present tense verb “lay” is misused in sentences like this one: “The geographers are checking precisely where the islands detected recently by satellite lay in the Pacific Ocean.” The correct usage here is the transitive, plural present tense “lie”: “The geographers are checking precisely where the islands detected recently by satellite lie in the Pacific Ocean.”

Why are “lie” and “lay” such problematic verbs? To find out, let’s once again clearly distinguish between intransitive and transitive verbs.

A verb is intransitive when it doesn’t need a direct object to work properly in a sentence, as is the case with “yawned” in this sentence: “During his trial, the unrepentant criminal often yawned.” Here, “yawned” is clearly intransitive. It doesn’t need a direct object, and the sentence is complete without one.

On the other hand, a verb is transitive when it absolutely needs a direct object to receive its action, as is the case with “grip” in this sentence: “He gripped my arm.” Drop the direct object of such verbs and the sentence no longer makes sense: “He gripped.”

Now, the problem with “lie” and “lay” is that apart from the fact that they have somewhat overlapping meanings, they are also highly irregular verbs that inflect or change forms in such unpredictable, confusing ways.

The intransitive “lie,” in the sense of staying at rest horizontally, inflects as follows: “lies” for the singular present tense, as in “She chokes when she lies down”; “lie” for the plural present tense, as in “They choke when they lie down”; “lay” for the past tense, whether singular or plural, as in “She got tired and lay down”; and the past participle “lain” in the perfect tenses, as in “She has lain all day while her husband is away.” None of the usages of “lie” above has a direct object.

Now here’s how the transitive “lay,” in the sense of setting something down, inflects: “lays” for the singular present tense, as in “She meticulously lays breakfast for us”; “lay” for the plural present tense, as in “They meticulously lay breakfast for us”; “laid” for the past tense, as in “We laid our laptops on the table”; and the past participle “laid” for the perfect tenses, as in “They had laid their laptops aside by the time their manager arrived.” Here, every usage of “lie” has a direct object.

Take note that among these inflections, the past tense form of the intransitive “lie”—“lay”—is exactly the same as that of the present tense plural of the transitive “lay”—also “lay.” It is this quirk of the language that makes it difficult for us to see whether “lie” or “lay” is being used transitively or intransitively, so we must be very careful indeed when using these two highly irregular verbs. (September 15, 2007)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, September 15, 2007 © 2007 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Using the serial comma isn’t just a matter of stylistic preference

It might seem like it’s just a matter of personal stylistic preference, but unlike most journalists and writers, I am a consistent user of the serial comma in both my private correspondence and published work. The serial comma is, of course, the comma placed immediately before the conjunctions “and,” “or,” or “nor” that precedes the final item in a serial list of three or more items, as in this sentence: “The European tourist visited Manila, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Bangkok last summer.” Most newspaper writers and editors do away with that serial comma, though, and would write that sentence this way: “The European tourist visited Manila, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok last summer.”

Now the question is: Am I just being dense or bullheadead in using the serial comma when most everybody else routinely gets rid of it? I had the occasion to defend my preference when it was challenged by a foreign reader of my English-usage column in The Manila Times over a year ago, and I thought of posting that defense in this week’s edition of the Forum for the appreciation of those who still have an open mind about the matter. (December 18, 2010)      

Why I consistently use the serial comma 

Sometime ago, a foreign reader of my column in The Manila Times raised an eyebrow over my use of the comma before the conjunction “and” in this sentence: “The [author] unravels the various mechanisms and tools of English for combining words and ideas into clear, logical, and engaging writing.”

He commented: “There is a comma after the second to the last adjective, and I noted that you do this all the time. Has some authority changed convention?”

That comma that made him uncomfortable is, of course, the serial comma, which is also called the Oxford comma and the Harvard comma. It’s the comma placed by some writers like me—but avoided by most editors of Philippine newspapers and magazines—immediately before the conjunction “and,” “or,” or “nor” that precedes the final item in a list of three or more items. Admittedly, its use has remained debatable up to this day among writers and editors in various parts of the world.

Here’s how I justified my consistent use of the serial comma to that foreign reader:  

Yes, I use the serial comma all the time as a matter of stylistic choice. I just happen to have imbibed the serial-comma tradition from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, the Chicago Manual of Style, and H.W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage. However, during my early days as a campus journalist and later as a reporter for a daily newspaper, I would routinely knock off my serial commas because the newspaper I was working with had adopted the no-serial-comma preference of American print media, particularly The New York Times and the Associated Press. If I didn’t knock off those serial commas myself, my editors would do so anyway and sullenly admonish me not to foist my personal preference over the house rule.    

But no, the convention on whether or not to use the serial comma hasn’t changed at all. I’m aware that the no-serial-comma tradition remains a widespread stylistic practice of the mass media in the United Kingdom as well as in Canada, Australia, and South Africa. But personally, I just want to be consistent after making a personal choice based on my own experience with the problems of punctuation over the years.

Of course, the usefulness of the serial comma might not be readily apparent and appreciated when the items in a sentence with a serial list consist only of a single word or two, as in the following sentences:

“She bought some apples, oranges and pears.”

“For the role of Hamlet, the choices are Fred Santos, Tony Cruz, Jimmy Reyes and George Perez.” 

But see what happens when the listed items consist of long phrases with more than four or five words:

“The major businesses in the domestic pet services industry are traditional veterinary services, fancy pet grooming and makeover shops, a wide assortment of animal and bird food, freshwater and marine fish of various kinds and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”

Now, try to figure out where each enumerative item ends and begins in the phrase “freshwater and marine fish of various kinds and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”

In contrast, see how clear and unequivocal the last two items in the list become when we deploy a serial comma between “various kinds” and “aquarium equipment,” as follows:

“The major businesses in the domestic pet services industry are traditional veterinary services, fancy pet grooming and makeover shops, a wide assortment of animal and bird food, freshwater and marine fish of various kinds, and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”

I therefore think it’s best to use a serial comma by default in such situations regardless of how long the phrase for each item is in the enumerative sequence. This way, we can consistently avoid confusing readers and avoid violating their sense of rhythm and balance. (July 4, 2009)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, June 4, 2009 © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

A rather curious state of affairs in the grammar of “do”-questions

In my essay on the usage of the pronoun “none” that I posted here last week, I explained that “none” is treated as singular when it means “not one” and as plural when it means “not any.” But the senior PR executive who wondered about this particular usage had an interesting related question about the usage of the pronoun “you”: If, in fact, “you” is either singular or plural depending on the speaker’s or writer’s intention, why is it grammatically correct to say “Do you (still) have a problem with your grammar?” but grammatically wrong to say “Do you (still) has a problem with your grammar?” Indeed, from the looks of it, there seems to be a grammatical contradiction here.

This is why in a subsequent issue of The Manila Times, I wrote a follow-up essay, “It’s the helping verb that takes the tense,” to explain this rather curious state of affairs. In that essay, which I am now posting in this week’s edition of the Forum, I discussed the even  more compelling grammatical reason for using “have” instead of “has” in “do”-questions like the one that had puzzled the senior PR executive. (December 10, 2010)

It’s the helping verb that takes the tense

In my previous column [posted here in the Forum last week], I explained to a senior PR executive why I used the singular verb form “has” for the subject “none” in this sentence construction of mine: “I hope none of you still has a problem choosing between ‘bring’ and ‘take’...” He had wondered if I should have used the plural verb form “have” instead in the same way that it’s used in this example that he provided: “I don’t want to be caught saying ‘Do you (still) has?’ We should all ask ‘Do you (still) have?’” 

I explained that he was correct in using the plural verb form “have” in that sentence construction because in contrast to my sentence construction, the subject is clearly the pronoun “you.” This, I pointed out, is because “you”—by some quirk of English grammar—always requires the plural form of the verb regardless of whether it’s meant to be singular or plural. But I added in closing that there’s an even more compelling reason for using “have” in “do”-questions like the one he had supplied. 

That reason is the same I gave to a Hong Kong-based Filipina journalist-teacher who—almost at the same time as the senior PR executive—wrote me seeking an answer to this question posed by an adult Chinese student of hers: “Why do we combine the past and present tenses in sentences like ‘I did not go to school yesterday’? Why isn’t it ‘I did not went to school [instead]’? How do you define that sentence construction? Is there a special term for it, or do we just say ‘It’s that way because that’s the rule’?” 

Here now is the common reason for that usage that baffled both the senior PR executive and the adult Chinese student of the Filipina journalist-teacher: English has three primary helping verbs—“do,” “be,” and “have.” Also called auxiliary verbs, they help the main verb in a sentence form questions, negatives, and some verb tenses. The general rule is that when a helping verb is used in a sentence, it’s the helping verb that takes the tense, while the main verb takes its base form (the infinitive of the verb without the “to,” as in “make” from the infinitive “to make”). 

“Do” in particular is used to (a) indicate questions, (b) indicate the negative of a statement, and (c) emphasize a statement. Here are the particulars of its usage:

(a) “Do” to indicate a question: “Did he take the bus?” “Does he take the bus?” In both the past and present tense, it’s the helping verb “do” that takes the tense. The main verb “take” doesn’t take the tense and remains in its base form. 

Note that when “do” is used as a helping verb to form a question, the main verb always takes its base form—which just happens to look like the plural form when, in fact, it’s really not—regardless of whether the subject (or doer of the action) is singular or plural. In all cases, it’s the helping verb “do” that takes the tense, as in these questions that have plural subjects: “Did they take the bus?” “Do they take the bus?” “Did we take the bus?” “Do we take the bus?” 

(b) “Do” to indicate the negative of a statement: “I did not take the bus.” “I don’t take the bus.” In both these sentences, it’s the helping verb “do” that takes the tense. The main verb “take” doesn’t take the tense and remains in its base form. 

(c) “Do” to emphasize a statement: “I did take the bus.” “I do take the bus.” Here, “do” works to strongly emphasize a response to a particular question like, say, “Did (or “Do”) you really take the bus?” Again, in such cases, it’s the helping verb “do” that takes the tense. The main verb “take” doesn’t take the tense and remains in its base form. (June 20, 2009)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, June 20, 2009 © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The pronoun “none” can mean either “not one” or “not any”

Is the noun “none” singular or plural? This is a question that I’ve been often asked by readers of my English-usage column in The Manila Times over the past eight years, and the question I invariably give is: “It depends.” It depends on whether the sense intended by the speaker or writer for “none” is “not one”—in which case it’s singular—or “not any”—in which case it’s plural.

In mid-2009, a senior PR executive called my attention to what he thought was my erroneous usage of the pronoun “none” in an explanation I made for the usage choice between “bring” and “take.” By way of reply, I wrote the essay below, “My reason for using the singular verb form for ‘none’,” which I would like to share with you by posting it in this week’s edition of the Forum. (December 4, 2010) 

My reason for using the singular verb form for “none” 

Sometime ago, in response to e-mail I sent out inviting selected people to visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, I received this very interesting reply from a senior PR executive who was currently vacationing in Europe:

“Just wanted you to know I share your passion for correct English usage. Sometimes I feel guilty of being ‘holier than thou’ when I shower my employees with pieces of advice on English communication.

“But you know, we are all human and we do make mistakes, too, or ‘typos’ if you will. We are [as they say] entitled to make such errors once a year.

“Take a look at your first sentence [in the e-mail]: ‘I hope none of you still has a problem choosing between “bring” and “take”...’

“Don’t you think you should instead say ‘I hope none of you still have a problem choosing between “bring” and “take”...?’

“I don’t want to be caught saying, ‘Do you (still) has?’ We should all ask ‘Do you (still) have?’

“Just wondering! (I don’t know the subtleties of grammar, and I certainly don’t know how to conjugate. I write only on the basis of how the sentence sounds.)”

Here’s my reply to the senior PR executive:

You’ve raised a valid and very interesting question about my usage of the singular verb “has” for that sentence.

Actually, the pronoun “none” could be singular or plural depending on how the writer uses it. As noted by The American Heritage Dictionary, “The choice between a singular or plural verb depends on the desired effect. Both options are acceptable in this sentence: None of the conspirators has (or have) been brought to trial.” Here, the sense of “none” could either be “not one” or “not any.”

In my sentence, my intent was to use “none” in the sense of “not one,” so I chose to use the singular form “has” for the verb. Still, it’s perfectly valid to ask: Why not the plural form “have” instead?  

Here’s the reason for my choice:

My basic sentence—with its complicating modifiers removed—is actually this: “I hope none of you still has a problem.” Here, the subject of the sentence is clearly the pronoun “none”; it’s not the plural pronoun “you,” which is simply a part of the phrase “of you” that modifies “none.” In fact, we can further boil down the sentence to this more basic form: “I hope none has a problem.” Here, it becomes much easier to appreciate the logic behind my choice of the singular “has.” Indeed, it would be odd if not grammatically wrong to write or say, “I hope none have a problem.”

Still another way to understand this usage is to analyze this other sentence: “I hope one of you [is, are] willing to help me do the annual budget.” Here, of course, the subject is clearly the singular pronoun “one,” so it obviously makes sense for the verb to take the singular form “is”: “I hope one of you is willing to help me do the annual budget.” Because “you” isn’t the operative subject of the sentence, its closeness to the verb doesn’t in any way determine whether that verb takes the singular or plural form.

With the usage examples the PR executive presented, however, the situation is different. Definitely, you and I don’t ever want to be caught asking, “Do you (still) has a problem with your grammar?” As you pointed out, we should ask, “Do you (still) have a problem with your grammar?” This is because here, the subject is clearly the pronoun “you,” which, regardless of whether it’s meant to be singular or plural, always requires the plural form of the verb. (June 13, 2009)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, June 13, 2009 © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Next week, I’ll post my follow-up essay discussing an even more compelling reason for using “have” in “do”-questions like the one presented above.

Good conversationalists phrase their tag questions with finesse

In social gatherings, we can identify English-proficient people right away by the correct and graceful way they phrase their “tag questions.” These are the questions they ask at the tail end of what they have just said—questions that are meant to get a quick confirmation or reaction from their listeners, like the two-word question attached to this statement: “You chose that incompetent manager, didn’t you?” Honestly now, how good are you in framing your own tag questions? Do you ask them confidently and flawlessly, or are you sometimes still seized with self-doubt and falter when coming up with them?

In a two-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in 2004, I discussed the general grammatical pattern for tag questions, the three ways of forming them, and the special cases of tag questions that don’t follow the general pattern. To help Forum members and guests achieve greater mastery in asking tag questions during their conversations, I have combined the two essays into one and posted it in this week’s edition of the Forum.   

I trust that reading the essay will help make you a more polished speaker in English and a more confident and graceful conversationalist. (November 27, 2010)

Saying our tag questions right

A good indicator of one’s English proficiency is the ability to use tag questions properly. But wait—we all know what “tag questions” are, don’t we all? Well, if some of us don’t or have already forgotten, the mini-question “don’t we all?” in the preceding sentence is what’s called a tag question. Some grammarians prefer to call it a “question tag,” and the whole statement inclusive of that mini-question the “tag question.” For our purposes, however, we will refer to the mini-question as the tag question itself, or “tag” for short; we will not quibble over the terminology. The important thing is for us to fully appreciate and understand how native English speakers purposively use tag questions to get a quick confirmation or reaction from their listeners. With that, we should be able to form English tag questions ourselves with greater confidence, using them flawlessly to emphasize our thoughts and ideas and to elicit the desired response from our listeners.

The general pattern for tag questions

Most of us will probably recall that tag questions generally follow a definite pattern: a positive statement is followed by a negative tag question, and a negative statement is followed by a positive tag question. Since tags are meant to be spoken, of course, it’s normal to use contractions of the negative forms of verbs either in the tag question or in the main statement itself.

Here’s a quick drill to jog our rusty memories about the grammar of tags. From the positive standpoint: “She is, isn’t she?” “They do, don’t they?” “We can, can’t we?” “You are Filipino, aren’t you?” And from the negative standpoint: “She doesn’t, does she?” “They don’t, do they?” “We can’t, can we?” “You aren’t Filipino, are you?”

We can see that the tag questions above are all of opposite polarity to that of the main statement. Also, we must keep in mind that without exception, the verb in a tag question always has the same tense as the verb in the main statement. (In speech, we must note here, there should always be a brief pause between the main statement and the tag question; in writing, this brief pause must always be indicated by a comma between the main statement and the tag question.)

Three ways of forming tag questions

Some of us will probably recall that depending on the kind of verb used in the main statement, there are actually three ways of forming tag questions. First, if that verb is a form of the auxiliary verb “be,” the same form of that verb must be used in the tag question: “He is from Manila, isn’t he?” “We aren’t that bad, are we?” “They were of foreign origin, weren’t they?” Second, if a main statement uses a modal such as “can,” “could,” or “should,” the same modal must be used in tag question: “She can dance, can’t she?” “They couldn’t do that, could they?” “We shouldn’t interfere in their affairs, should we?” And third, if the main statement uses an active verb (instead of only an auxiliary verb), the appropriate form of the auxiliary verb “do” takes the place of that active verb in the tag question: “She loves you, doesn’t she?” “You take me for granted, don’t you?” “They played the part, didn’t they?” 

We will recall, too, that when a main statement has a proper name as subject, the tag question must use its pronoun instead: “Jennifer is doing well in Singapore, isn’t she?” “Manila isn’t the tourist capital in Asia these days, is it?” “Some Australians eat kangaroo meat, don’t they?” “Nestle is the biggest food company in the world, isn’t it?”

Special cases of tag questions

We must be aware, however, that some special cases of English-language tag questions don’t strictly follow the norms that we have just discussed. Here are two such tags that seemingly look and sound askew: “Let’s go out, shall we?” “Let’s not go out, shall we?” Are the tags here proper or not? Yes, they are. Even if these tags often raise the hackles of grammar purists, native English speakers accept and use both of them. The strictly grammatical to say “Let’s go out, shall we?” is, of course, “We’ll go out, shan’t we?”, but it sounds stiff and unnatural. Here are two natural-sounding alternatives that should sit in well with Filipinos: “Let’s go out, all right?” “Let’s go out, okay?”

Another notable special case involving tags is the whole range of statements that use “nothing,” “nobody,” and “no one” as their subject. In such cases, the statements should be considered of negative polarity, and their tag questions should be given a positive polarity: “Nothing came in the mail, was there?” “Nobody bothered you last night, was there?” “No one wants this, is there?”

Here are a few more tags that don’t scrupulously follow that polarity rule: “I’m correct, aren’t I?” (Not “I’m correct, amn’t I?” The awkward tag “amn’t I” is “am I not?” in contracted form, which is unacceptable grammar). “She’d better take it, hadn’t she?” (Not “She’d better take it, wouldn’t she?” The tag “hadn’t she?” is actually “had she better not?” in contracted form. That tag is the logical polar negative of the full statement “She had better take it,” where the operative verb form is “had better,” not “take.”). “This will do, won’t it?” (Not “This will do, willen’t it?”—which uses a tag that doesn’t exist in English. Conversely, the reverse-polarity statement will be “This won’t do, will it?”) 

Tag questions that ignore the opposite polarity rule

Another exception about tags that bewilders many nonnative English speakers is this: the opposite polarity rule can actually be pointedly ignored when people want to strongly express sarcasm, disbelief, surprise, concern, shock, or anger. Take the following examples: “You think you’re indispensable, do you?” “Oh, you will really do that, will you?” “Oh, she really left him, did she?” “So you’re finally getting married, are you? That’s great!” (Or the contrary sentiment: “So she’s finally getting married, is she? The nerve!”) “And you think that’s amusing, do you?” And then, as a mark of politeness, positive tags can also be routinely attached to positive requests: “Come here, will you?” “Do that, will you?” “Please hand me that screw driver, will you?”

When people use negative statements with negative tag questions, on the other hand, it is not necessarily bad grammar but a sure sign of the breakdown of civility or of downright hostility and combativeness: “So you don’t love me at all, don’t you?” “You really didn’t like the idea, didn’t you?” “So you don’t think my school is good enough, don’t you?” “So you didn’t want peace after all, didn’t you?” The negative tags emphasize the negativeness of the main statement to deliberately rile people or to make them feel guilty. They give vent to feelings of meanness.

Negative statements with positive tag questions

Now, from experience, we all know that using negative statements with positive tag questions in the standard manner is the polite, socially acceptable way of asking for information or help. Such statements are particularly useful if we don’t know the people being addressed. It is rude, for instance, to simply approach or accost at the mall someone we don’t know and ask, pointblank, “Where’s the women’s room?” The civilized way, of course, is to restate that question to the needed degree of politeness, depending on who is being addressed.

Here’s that same question said a little bit more politely, addressed to people of about the same age or social station as the speaker: “Do you know where the women’s room is?” (A tag question isn’t used in such cases.) Now here it is in a polite, nonaggressive form, this time addressed to people older or of a higher social station than us: “You wouldn’t know where the women’s room is, would you?” (This time, the question form “Do you know...?” and the tag question that follows make the statement sufficiently deferential.)

Here are a few more patterns of negative statements with positive tag questions, the use of which should make us more pleasant, convivial people to deal with: “You don’t know of any job openings in your company at this time, do you?” “You don’t happen to know where the stock exchange building is, do you?” “You wouldn’t be willing to lose all that money in gambling, would you?” “You haven’t got anything to do with what happened, do you?” “You can’t spare me a thousand for my son’s tuition, can you?” “You can’t believe it that the woman’s leading the race, can you?”

The beauty of negative statements with positive tag questions is that they subtly prime up the listener’s mind either to accept the given idea or to decline it quickly and gracefully; in fact, refusing to answer the positive tag questions at all actually will make the person being addressed look rude and impolite. In this classic communication gambit of appealing to the other’s goodness of heart and of cushioning a possible blow to one’s self-esteem before that blow is even inflicted, nobody should lose face whatever the answer might be. (May 24 and 31, 2004)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, issues of May 24 and 31, 2004 © 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Long noun forms make sentences exasperatingly difficult to grasp

When editing manuscripts for publication, one of the most time-consuming problems I often encounter and must deal with is the long noun form. By this, I mean the subject or doer of the action in the sentence needs a great many words to be stated completely, thus unduly delaying the delivery of the verb in the sentence. One such long noun form is to be found in the following lead passage of an actual media release a few years back:  

“A free seminar on using novel nutritional technologies and innovative techniques to help Filipino poultry raisers optimize their yield and increase their profit in the light of rising feed and production expenses has been set at the EDSA Shangri-la Hotel at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, its organizer, Alltech Biotechnology Corp. said.”

The subject of that sentence is, of course, the 32-word-long noun phrase “a free seminar on using novel nutritional technologies and innovative techniques to help Filipino poultry raisers optimize their yield and increase their profit in the light of rising feed and production expenses,” and the operative verb in that sentence is “has been set.” By the time readers reach that verb, though, they would no doubt be already gasping for air and would likely have lost track of what the sentence is all about.*

Three years ago, a reader of my English-usage column in The Manila Times asked me how best to deal with monstrously long noun forms like that. He sent me a sentence with a 15-word noun form that, although less than half as long as the 32-word behemoth I presented above, was no less troublesome from both the sentence construction and reading comprehension standpoints. I wrote the essay below to show him how to make such a sentence more manageable, and I am now posting it in the Forum for your guidance when you encounter a similar exasperatingly hard-to-grasp sentence. (November 20, 2010).

Problems with long noun forms

A reader in India, Surajit Dasgupta, had asked me for advice on how to deal with the problems he was encountering with long noun forms:

“Would you please take up how to deal with sentences with long subjects in your column? I frequently come across this situation, as in this example: ‘Isolated instances of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock markets to raise funds for their operations have been reported.’

“How do I reduce the length of the subject?

“In one of your past columns that briefly dealt with this topic, you suggested that the long subject be broken up. I tried it with the sentence above, but the resulting sentence doesn’t sound natural. Look: ‘Isolated instances have been reported of terrorist outfits manipulating the stockmarkets to raise funds for their operations.’”

My open reply to Surajit:

The problem with sentences with a very long noun form as subject is that the operative verb comes too late to execute the action, making such sentences confusing and difficult to read.

Let’s closely examine the example presented: “Isolated instances of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock markets to raise funds for their operations have been reported.”

Here, the subject is this 15-word noun phrase, “isolated instances of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock markets to raise funds for their operations,” and the operative verb is “have been reported.” By the time we reach the last word of that noun phrase, of course, we may already be gasping for air and may have already forgotten what the subject was all about. We then have to go back to the beginning of the noun phrase to regain our semantic bearings, thus losing time and reading momentum.

This early, however, I must strongly caution against reducing the length of the noun phrase to solve this problem, for it can alter the semantics of the sentence very seriously.

Instead, we should first consider breaking the long noun form into what is called a discontinuous phrase. This will allow the operative verb to be introduced earlier in the sentence so it can execute its action sooner, as was done in the following sentence: “A report without attribution reached the newsroom that the high-flying finance company was about the declare bankruptcy.” This sentence has a little rough edge to it, but it reads and sounds better than the original sentence that allowed the 14-word noun phrase to run its full course before coming up with its operative verb: “A report without attribution that the high-flying finance company was about the declare bankruptcy reached the newsroom.”

The discontinuous-phrase rewrite of Surajit’s sentence, though, doesn’t do as well: “Isolated instances have been reported of terrorist outfits manipulating the stockmarkets to raise funds for their operations.” It is confusing and it sounds bad because the long noun phrase got disjointed semantically when it was made into a discontinuous phrase.

A much better option in this case is to construct the sentence by using the much-maligned expletive “there” up front: “There have been reports of isolated instances of terrorist outfits manipulating the stockmarkets to raise funds for their operations.” This is semantically and structurally superior to the discontinuous-phrase option, but expect many grammarians to frown on it on the ground that using the expletive “there” weakens the action of the operative verb.

That leaves us only one other option: using the active voice for the problematic sentence. It’s the best option really, but it will require the sentence to specify the doer of the action. Assuming that it’s the ANC (the ABS-CBN news channel), we can do the following straightforward construction: “The ANC has reported isolated instances of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock markets to raise funds for their operations.”

That sentence looks good and reads very well—strong proof that putting sentences in the active voice is our best option for dealing with problems with long noun forms. (June 18, 2007)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, June 18, 2007 issue © 2007 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

When a tremendously popular song legitimizes a grammatical atrocity

How does obviously bad English grammar become acceptable usage? I think this could happen when a song takes lyrical license with bad grammar, then goes on to make itself a worldwide hit for so many years. This was surely the case with the grammatically lamentable phrase “off of” in such remarks as “Could you please wipe that smirk off of your face?” This much I told Ed Maranan, a literary writer-friend of mine, sometime in mid-2009 when he bewailed the pandemic of this peculiar syntax not only in face-to-face conversations but also in the mass media as well as on the web. And the culprit, I theorized in a note to him, was the British rock-band Rolling Stones, whose 1965 blockbuster-hit song “Get Off My Cloud” became one of the two bestselling back-to-back single releases in music history.

As some of you might still recall, the song’s lyrics aggressively repeated these bad-grammar lines four times: “I said, Hey! You! Get off of my cloud / Hey! You! Get off of my cloud / Hey! You! Get off of my cloud / Don’t hang around ’cause two’s a crowd / On my cloud baby...” There’s no doubt in my mind that since then, it’s been primarily responsible for legitimizing the “off of” usage in the English lingua franca.

But should we fault the Rolling Stones for this grammatical atrocity? I don’t think so. As I quoted Patricia O’Conner, a best-selling author of books on contemporary English usage, in an essay I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in May 2009, “The ‘rules’ are simply what educated speakers generally accept as right or wrong at a given time. When enough of us decide that ‘cool’ can mean ‘hot,’ change happens.”

In the case of “off of,” that change certainly has happened and there isn’t much we can do about it now. (November 13, 2010)

The ‘off of’ bad-grammar pandemic

A friend of mine, the award-winning writer Ed Maranan, e-mailed me this lament sometime back: “I can’t stand it any more, Joe! Over the last two years, I have seen its use proliferate, and I don’t know when it started becoming fashionable or grammatically acceptable, or both. I am referring to ‘off of,’ as in this example: ‘The priest said, “No, but it will wipe that smile off of your face.”

“Aren’t we allowed to just say ‘wipe that smile off your face’? I’m angry and tongue-twisted!”

The following day, Ed made this follow-up: “Hi, Joe! Here’s one more, among countless others:

“‘All of those grocery store mailers and catalogs are pretty pointless to receive if you are like most people and really hate junk mail. You can help get rid of this by removing yourself off of random mailing lists.’

“Seems like mostly North American usage, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s already in use across the Atlantic.”

Seven minutes later Ed was back again: “I just had to Google it up, Joe. It’s worse than I thought. It’s pandemic. As far as I’m concerned, the only time the two can be used together is ‘the send-off of the troops,’ etc. I wonder how long it would be before the sign says ‘Keep off of the grass’...”

I must say that I had felt queasy myself over the growing use of “off of,” but the feeling turned to alarm when I did my own Google check. As of May 13, 2009, the web already had over 107,000,000 entries for “off of.” Ed is right: its usage has become pandemic.

Here are a few more usages of “off of” that stuck like fishbone in my throat: “Get this bug off of me!” “The Internet is taking the shine off of Apple.” “When moms criticize, dads back off of baby care.” “I can’t take my eyes off of you.”

Like most people of my generation, I have long known that “off of” in constructions like “I can’t take my eyes off of you” is bad English—to be tolerated only as an exercise in lyrical license, as in that line from the 1967 hit single “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You.” The scrupulously correct usage is, of course, “I can’t take my eyes away from you,” and whenever this correction was challenged, we simply invoked good English grammar and that was that.

  

So why today’s “off of” pandemic?

My theory is that this bad-grammar contagion started in England itself way back in 1965. In September of that year, the British rock-band Rolling Stones released their song “Get Off My Cloud,” whose lyrics repeat these aggressive bad-grammar lines four times: “I said, Hey! You! Get off of my cloud / Hey! You! Get off of my cloud / Hey! You! Get off of my cloud / Don’t hang around ’cause two’s a crowd / On my cloud baby…”

A blockbuster in both the United Kingdom and the United States, “Get Off My Cloud” went on to become one of the two bestselling back-to-back single releases in music history. I daresay that over the next 42 years, it’s been primarily responsible for legitimizing the “off of” usage in both mind and tongue all over the world.

The lesson here, I think, is to never underestimate the power of song in modern times to propagate bad grammar and make it de facto acceptable usage. As Patricia O’Conner, former editor of The New York Times Book Review and author of the bestselling grammar book Woe is I, has observed about who decides what good grammar is, “The answer is we all do. Everybody has a vote. The ‘rules’ are simply what educated speakers generally accept as right or wrong at a given time. When enough of us decide that ‘cool’ can mean ‘hot,’ change happens.” (May 16, 2009)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, May 16, 2009 issues © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Some guideposts for positioning adjectives in English sentences

Adjectives are arguably the most troublesome part of speech of the English language. They can wreak havoc on the meaning of our statements when we position them improperly in particular phrases, clauses, or sentences. Wrongly positioned adjectives result in faulty modification jobs that can give rise to bizarre noun forms, unexpectedly absurd and out-of-this-world ideas or situations, or—at the very least—embarrassing dangling or squinting modifiers.

Are there practical rules and guidelines for avoiding these pitfalls in adjective usage? There are several of them, of course, but I must say that they are not simple nuts-and-bolts grammar rules but conceptual semantic guideposts intricately woven into the writing craft itself. At any rate, in a two-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in December 2009, I attempted to put some science—perhaps “system” is a less prepossessing and intimidating word—to the positioning of adjectives in English. I did so by discussing some frequently encountered adjective placement dilemmas, after which I gave systematic prescriptions for surmounting them.

For the benefit of Forum members and guests, I have now combined that two-part essay into one and posted it in this week’s edition of the Forum. (November 6, 2010)

Positioning adjectives in English

Sometime last month, I came across this peculiar headline in the online news website of a local TV network (italicization mine): “Novice cop accidentally shoots dead roommate in Makati.” What struck me about this bit of news was, of course, the utter improbability of it all—something worthy of Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” or some other compendium of the bizarre. For whether cop or noncop, and whether the deed was accidental or intentional, who in his right mind would shoot an already dead person who happens to be his very own roommate? As it turned out, though, the victim was still alive when he was shot. The news report itself said so later in the story: “A new police recruit found himself in hot water* after his service firearm accidentally went off and killed his roommate in Makati City Monday night.”

The culprit behind that misleading news headline is, of course, the improper positioning of the adjective “dead” in the sentence. By sandwiching “dead” between the verb “shoots” and the noun “roommate,” the headline writer conveyed the wrong idea that the roommate was already dead before he was shot. This was because, as what sometimes happens in adjective misuse, the headline writer neglected to take logic and chronology into account in positioning the adjective. Indeed, a more logical position for that adjective—even if the position looks suspicious and sounds questionable itself—is after the noun “roommate,” as in this version: “Novice Makati cop accidentally shoots roommate dead.”

Having been a newspaper journalist myself, however, I know only too well that some news editors and many readers would also frown on that version. To them, the sentence “Novice Makati cop accidentally shoots roommate dead” would be as inexplicably difficult to analyze and defend grammatically as this other alternative, “Novice Makati cop accidentally shoots roommate to death.” They would argue that the former means almost the same thing as the original construction, while the latter creates the false impression that the shooting was done repeatedly until the victim was surely dead.

In fact, I think one of the very few constructions of that headline that could override all objections from the grammar, semantic, and logic standpoints is the following rewrite, which I admittedly arrived at after so many tries: “Novice Makati cop kills roommate in accidental shooting.”

In any case, we need to make ourselves much better equipped to handle adjective placement dilemmas like this by clearly understanding how to position adjectives properly in the English language. To get started, let’s first recall that as a rule, adjectives normally take either of two positions in a sentence: immediately before a noun, or after the main verb in a sentence.

 

An adjective that precedes the noun it modifies is called an attributive adjective, as the ones used in the following sentences: “Excellent weather is forecast for this weekend.” “The explorers found ancient drawings in the cave.” “We were amazed by his sharp mind.”

On the other hand, an adjective that comes right after the main verb in a sentence is called a predicate adjective, as the ones used in the following sentences: “The weather forecast for this weekend is excellent.” “To the explorers, the cave drawings appeared ancient.” “Despite great fatigue, the professor’s mind remained sharp.”

Note that a predicate adjective is always separated by a verb from the noun it modifies, and that verb is always a linking verb, like “is” (the singular present tense form of “be”), “appeared,” and “remained” in the predicate-adjective-using sentences above. Remember now that a linking verb, unlike, say, the action verb “jump,” doesn’t denote action; it simply connects a subject to additional information about itself.

It would be so simple to use adjectives if they can take only the two normal positions described above, but this, unfortunately, isn’t the case in practice. They can sometimes take various other positions in a sentence—and this is why they can sometimes get misplaced and wreak semantic havoc on sentences.

Here are those other positions in a sentence that can be taken by adjectives:

When they form part of a reduced relative clause, some adjectives can take a position immediately after a noun. Recall now that a relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun and is introduced by a relative pronoun such as “who,” “that,” and “which,” as in this sentence: “Please summon all the managers who are concerned.” Here, the relative clause “who are concerned” can be reduced by dropping the words “who are,” thus making the adjective “concerned” immediately follow the noun “managers”: “Please summon all the managers concerned.” (We don’t say, “Please summon all the concerned managers,” a form that uses “concerned” as an attributive adjective.)

Another example is when we reduce the relative clause “that is available” in the sentence “Please use all the money that is available.” This makes the adjective “available” immediately follow the noun “money”: “Please use all the money available.” (We don’t normally say, “Please use all the available money.”)

When an adjective modifies an indefinite pronoun, the adjective comes after the pronoun. This rule, which should already be second nature to all of us, applies to the indefinite pronouns “something,” “someone,” “somebody,” “somewhere,” “everyone,” “everybody,” “everything,” “anybody,” and “nobody”—and the adjective placement can’t be done in any other way. Examples: “Something wonderful happened to me last night.” “They went somewhere private.” “Nobody hungry wasn’t given the free meal.”

Note that indefinite pronouns immediately followed by an adjective are actually also reduced relative clauses; “something wonderful,” for instance, is the reduced form of the phrase “something that was wonderful” in the sentence “Something that was wonderful happened to me last night.”

  

Certain adjectives that describe size or age immediately follow a noun that denotes a unit of measurement. All of us should be thoroughly familiar with this usage, which applies to such sentences as “The Eiffel Tower is 325 meters high,” where the adjective “high” follows the noun form “325 meters”; and to such sentences as “The boxing champion is 29 years old,” where the adjective “old” follows the noun form “29 years.”

In some cases, adjectives can be placed after the noun for emphasis. Just two examples should suffice: “It was a mistake, plain and simple.” “They do all jobs, big and small.”              

Some adjectives can be positioned either before or after a noun, but the position affects their meaning. In the sentence “The responsible professors talked to the dean about the problem,” for instance, the noun phrase “the responsible professors” means “the professors who are trustworthy.” In contrast, in “The professors responsible talked to the dean about the problem,” the noun phrase “the professors responsible” means “the professors who are to blame for something.”

Postpositive or post-nominal adjectives always come after the noun they modify. These are adjectives like “royal” in “battle royal” (“The five friends fought and got themselves into a battle royal.”), “apparent” in “heir apparent” (“The heir apparent to the political dynasty refused to run for prime minister.”), “politic” in “body politic” (“The strongman’s reign was anathema to the body politic.”), and “immemorial” in “time immemorial” (The pyramids of Egypt have been there since time immemorial.”).

There are but a few postpositive adjectives in English—they are mostly name suffixes (like “incarnate” in “the devil incarnate”) and traditional expressions (like “aplenty” in “food aplenty”)—but it’s important to recognize them to avoid the embarrassment of misplacing them in our sentences. (December 6 and 12, 2009)

*I find the “found himself in hot water” metaphor in this news story bizarre, terribly inappropriate, and self-indulgent on the part of the reporter or editor. It gives the wrong impression that the gunshot must have also punctured a hot-water pipe, which then spung a leak on the gunman. This is language that I think should be absolutely avoided in journalism, but let’s reserve discussion of this for some other day. Your own thoughts about this would be most welcome, of course.

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, December 6 and 12, 2009 issues © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Let’s say goodbye to those irritating English clichés

Do you very often catch yourself peppering your conversations or extemporaneous remarks with the expressions “with all due respect” or “to be completely honest with you”? If so, and if you happen not to know it yet, be aware that these expressions two had ranked third and fourth, respectively, among the most irritating phrases in the English language. This was the finding of a worldwide survey conducted by the London-based Plain English Campaign in 1994 among 5,000 respondents in 70 countries.

Since then, in my English-usage columns and books, I have made it my advocacy to help curb the overuse of irritating English clichés. As part of my campaign, I specifically gave a lowdown on “with all due respect” and “to be honest with you” in an essay that I wrote for The Manila Times at about this time in 2005. I have decided to post that essay in this week’s edition of the Forum to give fresh impetus to that campaign.

I trust that after reading the essay below, most everybody will hold his or her tongue in check every time it’s tempted to let loose another “with all due respect” or “to be honest with you.” Frankly, our English will be much better off without the first, and it will sound more honest and straightforward with “frankly” instead of the second. (October 30, 2010)    

With respect to “with all due respect”

It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that “with all due respect” ranked third and “to be (completely) honest (with you)” fourth in a 1994 worldwide survey among the most irritating phrases in the English language.¹ These two phrases are obviously battered from severe overuse, and the Plain English Campaign survey of 5,000 respondents in 70 countries simply reflected this fact.

We can get an even clearer picture of this overuse by skimming the written and spoken usage of these two phrases that have made it to the World Wide Web. In a check I made with Google at about this time in 2005, there were 1,720,000 hits for “with all due respect” and 592,000 hits for “to be honest with you” (this dropped to 14,700 hits for usage that adds “completely” to the phrase).² There is compelling evidence on the Web that lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats, academics, religious leaders, and broadcast talk-show hosts and guests are writing and uttering these two phrases so indiscriminately as to make them downright annoying to their readers or listeners.

In the Philippines, of course, we know very well that “with all due respect” is the preferred prefatory phrase of lawyers and bureaucrats—a disconcerting form of legalese or bureau­cratese—when contradicting someone of higher authority or social station or when about to present an offensive statement. Take the following court pleading: “With all due respect [italicization mine], the prosecution submits that the initial presentation of defense evidence in the plunder case may push through on 30 June 2004 notwithstanding the pendency of incidents, if any, before the Honorable Court…” The phrase can grate on the layman’s ears, but as a code of lawyerly manners or politesse, it helps temper the unpleasantness of the typically adversarial language used in court. Also, its use in judicial proceedings has been hallowed by time, so it would be foolhardy to ask lawyers to consider stripping it from their language.

But using “with all due respect” could be very annoying or insulting when the phrase is appropriated by non-lawyers addressing fellow laymen, as in this complaint by a frustrated advocate: “Why is the government not paying attention? With all due respect [italicization mine], surely an economist like yourself can see the potential of such an innovation that could turn the Philippines into a superpower overnight.” Or in this remark by a feminist: “With all due respect [italicization mine], I do not know the level of pain that fathers go through after having his wife and the courts take his children away.” Here, “with all due respect” appears not to serve any useful purpose; in fact, omitting it makes the statement better-sounding and more forceful.

As to the phrase “to be (completely) honest (with you),” prefacing statements with it is often harmless in intimate or private conversations, but it can be very annoying when done publicly by politicians, public officials, and TV or radio talk-show hosts and guests. Consider the following remark by a public official in a TV interview in early 2005: “It’s [the bill’s] a little convoluted. To be honest with you [italicization mine], I could not sufficiently explain it at this point. But what was approved in principle last night is that there will be no pass-on insofar as the household consumers are concerned.” Or this remark by an information-systems sales manager in a newspaper interview: “[The competitor] can do what they want. And we don’t worry about market share. To be honest with you [italicization mine], it doesn’t make any difference to a customer.”

Speakers who habitually use “to be honest with you” obviously don’t realize it, but prefacing a statement with this phrase doesn’t enhance but actually detracts from the credibility of the statement. This is because although unintended, the phrase leads to the sneaking suspicion that the speaker is honest only in that particular instance and is generally dishonest at other times. And qualifying that phrase with “completely” only makes that impression stronger. In contrast, pruning out “to be honest with you” from such statements, or perhaps replacing it with the more concise “frankly,” can make the statements much more pleasant and convincing. 

The Plain English Campaign survey pinpointed 32 other very irritating English phrases, among them “24/7” (for “non-stop”) and such business and academic buzzwords as “address the issue,” “ballpark figure,” and “thinking outside the box,” but we need not discuss them in detail here. They are not that endemic in the Philippines anyway, and taking them up might only encourage the cliché fanciers in our midst to mindlessly spread their use through the broadcast media.³ (October 31, 2005)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, October 31, 2005 issue © 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

¹The most irritating phrase as determined by the Plain English Campaign survey in 1994 was, of course, “at the end of the day,” with “at this moment in time” as first runner-up. For the details, click this link to my essay “Doing battle with the most irritating phrases in English” that I posted earlier in the Forum. 

²Here, as reported by Google, is an update of the usage incidence of these clichés as of October 28, 2010 vs. the October 2005 figures: “with all due respect,” 3,890,000 hits vs. 1,720,000; “to be honest with you,” 2,210,000 vs. 592,000; and “to be completely honest with you,” 42,000 vs. 902,000. This is a worrisome growth in the usage of these irritating clichés.

³I’ll admit that I was too optimistic at the time that “24/7,” “address the issue,” “ballpark figure,” and “thinking outside the box” won’t attain annoying cliché status in the Philippines. However, we all know how indiscriminately these expressions have since been bandied about in academe, the corporate world, the mass media, and, of course, the web. We really need to firm up our individual resolve not to abet the use of these irritating clichés.