Giving the old college try to the fight against “boast of” and “nestled in”

It’s one thing to be proud of one’s country and one’s posessions, but it’s another to be always boasting about them—it can mark one as an inveterate braggart and get in the nerves of the listener to a point of no longer wanting to listen. This is the problem when one’s vocabulary for declaring possession of gets fixated in the “boast of” cliché, as in “The Philippines boasts of its rich healing practices that are deeply rooted in the people’s long tradition of wellness.” Ugh! That phrase puts an unpleasant color and leaves a bad taste on even the most well-meaning statements.

Another awful cliché in the Philippine hard-sell vocabulary is “nestled [in],” in the sense of “settled snugly or comfortably.” Its use for describing just about anything found on earth has become so indiscriminate that “nestled [in]” no longer evokes quiet comfort but outright vexation. Why don’t journalists and advertising copywriters just settle for unpretentious and much more honest words like “lies,” “located” or “situated”?

One-and-a-half years ago, when I thought that the mass media’s overuse of both “boast of” and “nestled in” had terribly gone out of hand, I decided to write an essay against their usage in my English-usage column in The Manila Times. From the looks of it, I don’t think their overuse has abated enough, so I am posting that same essay here to give my campaign against those two cliches the old college try.

Let’s wish ourselves all the luck!

Too much boasting and nestling in

If I were to judge from my newspaper, magazine, and web readings in recent years, it would appear that we are not only a most boastful people but also one so predisposed to petty exaggeration in our language. This is strongly evident in our glib overuse of two English expressions, “boast of [something]” and “nestled [in],” particularly in newspaper and magazine journalism, in advertising, and in the tourist literature.

Let’s talk about “boast of [something]” first. Its dictionary definition is, of course, “to puff oneself up in speech,” “to speak of or assert with excessive pride,” or “to possess and call attention to a source of pride.” Of course, it can also simply mean “to have” or “to contain”—the unboastful denotation that’s actually what is meant in many “boast of” statements.

Now, from Google’s estimated 775,000 citations* of what are “boasted about” in the Philippines, the following representative high-level boasts are perhaps semantically justifiable and factually defensible: “the Philippines boasts of some of the best beaches and scuba diving waters in the world,” “the Philippines boasts of a 94 percent literacy rate,” “the Philippines boasts [of] good English-language skills,” and “the Philippines boasts [of] some of the finest IT workers in the world.” Even so, if I were the drumbeater for these things, I’d be more circumspect and use “has” or “lays claim to” instead of “boasts of.” After all, levelheaded language often works much better than rank exaggeration in promotional talk of this kind.

Indeed, many of our boastings captured by Google are woefully out of proportion to the semantic enthusiasm expended on them: “Mindanao boasts of two new vapor heat treatment plants,” “[The library] boasts of a wealthy collection of multi-media materials on governance, productivity, and management,” “[The city] boasts of the first community-based breast screening program in RP,” “Domestic air travel market in Philippines boasts of a growth rate of 47 per cent,” and “One of the oldest in the province, this church boasts of a huge mural painting on its ceiling…” I think “boasts of” is out of line in all of these statements; the verb “has” could have done a much better job.

Now let’s talk about the terribly overused expression “nestled [in],” which means “settled snugly or comfortably” or “lying in a sheltered manner.” Google lists 288,000 citations for this expression in the Philippines alone, and when I looked at a representative sampling, I got the dreadful feeling that the expression is not only overused but subjected to severe semantic abuse as well.

Of course, there’s no doubt that the use of “nestled [in]” is semantically justified in these statements: “Nestled deep in the Cordilleras is Banaue, about nine hours from Baguio by bus,” “The first and only pine estate south of Metro Manila, [it] is a quiet sanctuary nestled in the gently rolling hills of Tagaytay,” and “Nestled atop a beachside cliff, [the resort] offers breathtaking views of the ocean from the balcony of your own private villa.” The sense of curling up comfortably and of restfulness is evident in all of these three statements.

But I think the writers had gone overboard in using “nestled [in]” in these highly contrived statements: “The Philippines lies nestled in the bosom of the East Asian growth area,” “Nestled in the center of everything worth the while, [the hotel] is located along Manila’s Roxas Boulevard fronting the Manila Bay,” “…the sophistication and elegance of a hotel [that’s] nestled right at the heart of Cebu’s bustling business district,” and “Taal Volcano—the word’s smallest volcano [that] is nestled in the middle of a scenic lake.”

Obviously, we can’t force everything to nestle into just anything for the sake of lending drama to our language. Instead of settling for a semantic near-miss, therefore, why not use a no-nonsense word like “lies,” “located” or “situated” instead? It will be right on the mark all the time. (August 23, 2008)

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*For some unknown reason, Google’s 775,000 citations for “boast of” in the Philippines on August 20, 2008 have dropped to 54,000 as of January 28, 2010.

** For some unknown reason, Google’s 288,000 citations for “nestled in” in the Philippines on August 20, 2008 have dropped to 70,400 as of January 28, 2010.

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, August 23, 2008, © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Is it a joke that the British have dinner for lunch?

Do the British ever have breakfast? Is it true that tea is either their afternoon snack or their early dinner? And is it a joke that they have dinner for lunch? And what about the Americans all over the continental United States? Do they all take and call their meals the same way as the British?

I must admit that I didn’t know the answers to these questions myself until, coming across an old e-mail from a Filipina reader based in London almost a year ago, I felt a sudden compulsion to check them out. Thus began my quick but illuminating incursion into the English mealtime vocabulary that led to my writing the essay below.

What I found is that even if the subjects of the British Commonwealth and the nationals of other English-speaking countries have English as a common language, their words for the same familiar things could be as astonishingly different as “lift” and “elevator,” “sidewalk” and “pavement,” “chips” and “crisps,” and—surprise of surprises—“tea” and “dinner.”

I invite you to read the essay now to see what I mean.

The English mealtime vocabulary

A few days ago, while I was going over my e-mail archives for my column in The Manila Times, my eye was drawn to this postscript from a Filipina reader who had written me from London over six years ago: “Oh, also, they call lunch here ‘dinner’ and dinner, ‘tea.’” I didn’t give this remark much thought at the time, thinking that the reader—perhaps oppressed by the thick fog that often blankets London—simply had mixed up her English mealtime vocabulary. This time, though, the discordant bit of information intrigued me and I casually mentioned it to my wife Leonor.

Leonor, who grew up and had her primary and secondary education in once-British-controlled Malaysia, readily agreed that my reader had probably mixed up her terms. She said that from what she remembers, the British call dinner “supper” and reserve the term “tea” for late-afternoon refreshments consisting of tea along with sandwiches, crackers, or cookies. Of course, she said she was talking about her Malaysian experience, not that of Great Britain itself, so I decided to further clarify this vocabulary issue at least to my own satisfaction.

As I was to discover, one’s English meal vocabulary depends as much on class distinctions as on national and regional geography. If you are Philippine-based all your life, though, there should be no problem at all. In our supposedly egalitarian democratic society, the American English for mealtime has long been in vogue: “breakfast” for early morning, “lunch” for midday, and “dinner” for evening—period. But when you travel from one English-speaking country to another, you’ll be surprised to find that the language for mealtime makes nothing less than tectonic changes.

To avoid confusing ourselves, though, let’s first talk about the commonality of terms. On “breakfast,” there’s broad agreement that it refers to the first meal of the day, especially when taken in the morning. It’s also universally accepted that “dinner” refers to “the principal meal of the day”; in fact, this English word comes from the French dejeuner, which means “to dine,” although “dinner” before the Middle Ages could either be a morning or midday meal.

In England today, however, the terms for mealtime appear to be largely determined along class lines. From what I can gather, at midday the upper class takes “lunch” while the working class takes “dinner.” At about 4:30 p.m., the middle class and the upper class take “tea,” which is a light meal of tea and finely cut sandwiches. Then, by early evening, the working class takes “supper,” a meal of bread and “dripping” (fat and juices drawn from meat during cooking)—usually their very last meal for the day. At about this time, the middle class and upper class take “high tea” (a fairly substantial meal), followed at about 8 o’clock with “dinner.”

Within the United Kingdom itself, however, even this class-determined meal vocabulary changes depending on regional location. I gathered that people in northern England almost invariably refer to their midday meal as “dinner” and their evening meal as “tea”—this confirms my Filipina reader’s postscript—but those in southern England call their midday meal “lunch,” their light afternoon meal “tea,” and their evening meal “dinner.” In the English midlands, though, it appears that “dinner” is always the evening meal, and that people use the term almost interchangeably with “tea.” In Ireland, in contrast, “lunch” is the midday meal and evening meals are either “tea” for large ones and “supper” for light ones, while “dinner” is only used to refer to a formal meal.

As most of us know, of course, the English mealtime vocabulary varies very little over at the United States. “Tea” hardly figures in the language, and whether you are in New England, in the Midwest, or in Texas, it’s “lunch” for the midday meal, with “dinner” and “supper” often used interchangeably for the evening meal or the final meal of the day. (March 7, 2009)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, March 7, 2009, © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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Dealing more confidently with exceptional cases of reported speech

Except for the personal thoughts that people tell us face-to-face, most of the spoken information we get every day comes to us secondhand, either through another person or through other communication channels like the print or broadcast media. What we usually get is what’s known as reported speech or indirect speech—“So and so told me last night that neighbor X was heard berating neighbor Y at the latter’s gate”; “I heard from so and so that Dina was supposed to leave last night for a job in Dubai but was stopped by her husband at the last minute.” And when we read something said by someone in newspapers and magazines, it’s often in the form of a paraphrase. In print, few and far between are the times when things said by someone are so memorable or important enough to be dished out as direct quotes.

We are all familiar with the usual grammar for reported speech—the reporting verb is in the simple past tense (usually “said”) and the operative verb of that reported statement utterance generally takes one step back from the present into the past, as in “Benny told me last night that he was thinking of backing out.” This is in contrast to his exact words when he spoke to you last night: “I am thinking of backing out.” There are certain situations, though, where this general rule doesn’t apply, and the grammar for reported speech in such situations is governed by the so-called exceptional sequence rule.

In this week’s edition of the Forum, I am posting an essay I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times almost four years ago explaining how verbs behave in the exceptional sequence. I hope reading it will give you greater confidence in dealing with this aspect of reported speech.

How verbs behave in the exceptional sequence

In these troubled and troubling times when people’s utterances—whether expressed in private or aired through the broadcast, cellular, or print media—are increasingly being viewed with mutual suspicion, it would be useful to make a quick review of the grammar of reported speech. This would require a reacquaintance with how verbs behave in the normal sequence of tenses and in the so-called exceptional sequence. People should clearly understand this behavior of verbs so they can have a clearer, unbiased perception of the chronology and logic of fast-breaking events as they happen in time.

Reported speech or indirect speech is, of course, simply the kind of sentence someone makes when he or she reports what someone else has said. For instance, a company’s division manager might have told a news reporter these exact words: “I am resigning to join the competition.” In journalism, where the reporting verb is normally in the past tense, that statement takes this form in reported speech: “The division manager said he was resigning to join the competition.”

The operative verb in utterances obviously can take any tense depending on the speaker’s predisposition or intent. However, when an utterance takes the form of reported speech and the reporting verb is in the past tense, the operative verb of that utterance generally takes one step back from the present into the past: the present becomes past, the past usually stays in the past, the present perfect becomes past perfect, and the future becomes future conditional. This is the so-called normal sequence-of-tenses rule in English grammar.

Now let’s review how this rule applies when that division manager’s utterance is stated in the various tenses:

Present tense to past tense. Utterance: “I am resigning to join the competition.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he was resigning to join the competition.”

Past tense to past tense. Utterance: “I resigned to join the competition.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he resigned to join the competition.” (The past tense can usually be retained in reported speech when the intended act is carried out close to its announcement; if much earlier, the past perfect applies.)

Present perfect to past perfect tense. Utterance: “I have resigned to join the competition.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he had resigned to join the competition.”

Future tense to future conditional tense. Utterance: “I will resign to join the competition.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he would resign to join the competition.”

The exceptional sequence. There is, however, one very rare instance when the operative verb in reported speech does not conform to this normal sequence of tenses. In the so-called exceptional sequence, which applies if the information being reported is permanently or always true, the operative verb in reported speech doesn’t take a tense backward but retains the present tense.

For instance, to prove a point, the division manager might have surprised his subordinates by saying an eternal verity like this: “A square has four sides of equal length.” This time, using the normal sequence-of-tenses rule to report that statement would be silly: “Our division manager said a square had four sides of equal length.” All squares will forever have four sides of equal length, so the exceptional sequence applies: “Our division manager said a square has four sides of equal length.”

But should the reported speech for habitual things also follow the exceptional sequence rule? Say, for instance, that right after declaring his intention to resign, that same division manager adds: “I am always loyal to the company I work for.” Would this reported speech for that utterance be correct: “He said he is always loyal to the company he works for”? Definitely not. By his very words, the speaker has shown that loyalty is such a fickle thing, so the normal sequence-of-tenses rule applies to his reported speech: “He said he was always loyal to the company he worked for.” (March 6, 2006)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, March 6, 2006, © 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Two dreadful clichés now endemic in the Philippines

After writing several times against their use over the past seven years, I decided to leave two of the most dreadful clichés in the English language well enough alone. I thought that soon enough, people would realize that “at the end of the day” and “at this point in time” would lend neither grace nor added respectability to their utterances on TV and radio and in various other public forums. On the contrary, as a spokesman of the London-based Plain English Campaign has said, using those two clichés “is about as pro­fessional as wearing a novelty tie or having a wacky ring-tone on your phone. When readers or listeners come across these tired ex­pressions, they start tuning out and completely miss the message—assuming there is one.”

But as the 2010 national election season is now well underway in the Philippines, “at the end of the day” and “at this point in time” are—to use another dreadful cliché—once again rearing their ugly heads in the airwaves and public address systems. Indeed, during the debates of presumptive presidential candidates last November, at least three or four of them simply couldn’t resist spicing their locutions with “at the end of the day” and “at this point in time” with disgusting relish. If they are doing so on network TV without blushing, I told myself, all the more they would be doing it in English-language speaking engagements that aren’t covered live or don’t require TV or radio coverage—and all the more they would impress on their local listeners that it’s perfectly respectable to spout those dreadful clichés. Indeed, if these people aspiring for the highest post in the gift of the land use “at the end of the day” and “at this point in time” so liberally and so proudly as if they were precious linguistic gems, why don't we ordinary mortals?

And so I am compelled to post in this blog an essay I wrote for my column in The Manila Times in December of 2007, “The Reign of the Dreadful Cliches,” where I pointed out that “at the end of the day” and “at this moment in time” (a variation of “at this point in time”) are actually severely damaged semantic goods, condemned as the first and second most hated English clichés world­wide. I am hoping that if we can’t stop the presidential candidates and other aspirants for public office from using those two dreaded clichés, at least we could set the example by banning our tongues from articulating them and by suggesting to our friends and acquaintances to do the same.

The Reign of the Dreadful Clichés

Precisely what’s so special about “at the end of the day” and “at this point in time” that probably one out of four Philippine legislators and public officials and probably the same ratio of TV talk-show hosts, news anchors, and guests are mouthing them much too often and with so much relish these days?

Nothing really. “At the end of the day” is simply a longer, flamboyant way of saying “ultimately,” “in the end,” or “after all,” while “at this point in time” is similarly a longer, flamboyant way of saying “now” and “currently.” And these two adverbial phrases—old-time gram­marians call them “ablative abso­lutes”—aren’t really meant to call attention to themselves. Like such modifiers as “clearly” and “defi­nitely,” they are designed simply to call attention to a point being made by the speaker, so they need to be used very sparingly to avoid irritating the listener or reader.

What’s very disturbing, however, is that many people think that liberally spicing their talk with these expressions is a sign of wis­dom, discernment, and sophisti­cation. Little do they know that on the contrary, “at the end of the day” and “at this point in time” have for several years now been condemned as the two most irritating clichés in the English language.

In a survey conducted in 70 countries in 2004 by the London-based Plain English Campaign, in particular, “at the end of the day” ranked first and “at this moment in time” (a variation of “at this point in time”) ranked second among the most hated English clichés world­wide. As the group’s spokesman so aptly observed when the rankings of the most irritating clichés were announced, “Using these terms in daily business is about as pro­fessional as wearing a novelty tie or having a wacky ring-tone on your phone. When readers or listeners come across these tired ex­pressions, they start tuning out and completely miss the message—assuming there is one.”

Again, in 2005, in a poll of 150 senior executives all throughout corporate America by the tem­porary staffing company Accountemps, “at the end of the day” ranked first among the 15 most annoying clichés.

Finally, in 2006, in a poll of 10,000 news sources that included 1,600 American newspapers, the Australian-based database com-pany Factiva found “at the end of the day” at the top of the 55 most overused English clichés. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, to use a cliché, for that poll did not cover the US broadcast media where the overuse of “at the end of the day” is decidedly much more pro­nounced.

If “at the end of the day” and “at this point in time” have indeed become such dreadful banes to the English language, why is it that they are now enjoying such wide currency in the Philippines? They have become such pernicious semantic crutches for so many public officials, media people, and students, and their dependency level is such that they may no longer be able to speak their minds without overusing those two clichés.

I suspect that not so far back, a highly influential public figure either in government, media, or academe must have triggered this domestic overuse of “at the end of the day” and “at this point in time.” Perhaps he or she must have used these two clichés much too often during a major event that was covered live by all of the local TV networks, thus setting such a wrongheaded example for English-savvy speech for audiences all over the land.

It no longer matters who that culprit was, but there’s no doubt that we are now in the midst of an “at the end of the day” and “at this point in time” pan­demic, and the only way to stop it is for all of us to totally retire these damaged semantic goods from our writing and speech—right now. (December 22, 2007)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, December 22, 2007, © 2007 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Parenthesis isn’t just optional material or an afterthought - Parts III and IV

We normally use the pair of curved marks known as the parenthesis to indicate textual material that’s optional to our sentence or that’s simply an afterthought. But the parenthesis is actually much more than just a punctuation for such added material. Indeed, the parenthesis in general is not the punctuation mark being used per se but the word, phrase, or even a full sentence that it encloses within the sentence. And the punctuation mark for parenthetical material isn’t necessarily the pair of curved marks that we are very familiar with; it could be a pair of enclosing commas or dashes—even brackets—depending on the degree of punctuation required by the parenthetical statement.

What follows are Parts III and IV of the four-part essay I wrote for my column in The Manila Times in January-February of 2008:

The parenthesis and its uses

Part III

We will now discuss the appositive phrase found in the following sentence that I presented for evaluation in the preceding essay: “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” The appositive phrase here is, of course, the parenthetical “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later.” It’s an added state­ment that gives context and texture to this vague, bare-bones sentence: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

On closer scrutiny, we will find that the appositive phrase is actually a simplified form of the nonrestrictive relative clause in this sentence: “Cleopatra, who was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” It is, in fact, the relative clause “who was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” with both the relative pronoun “who” and the linking verb “was” taken out.

That grammatical streamlining process produces a modifier in noun form—“the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later”—that is in apposition or equivalent to the noun form it modifies—“Cleopatra.” Indeed, appositive phrases are a compact and concise way of describing people, places, and things or of qualifying ideas within the same sentence. They allow us to provide more details about a subject without having to start another sentence—a process that sometimes undesirably slows down the pace of an unfolding exposition or narrative.

The use of appositive phrases, we now will probably recall, is also one of the most efficient ways of combining sentences. It allows a related statement from another sentence to be folded into the sen­tence that precedes it. The sentence that we are evaluating now, for instance, has combined these two sentences: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire. She was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later.” By making the state­ment in the second sentence an appo­sitive in the first, we get a sentence that’s richer in texture and more interest­ing to read: “Cleo­patra, the le­gendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly in­fluenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

Such constructions also have the added virtue of allowing us to develop the basic statement of a sentence unimpeded. Assume that we have already written this basic statement: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” If we use the appositive phrase “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” to form a new sentence after it, that new sentence would often become a stumbling block to developing the basic statement. Indeed, with a powerful statement like “She was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” getting in the way, it won’t be an easy task to go back to the thread of our basic statement and develop it. In contrast, folding that powerful statement into an appositive phrase in the first sentence neatly sidesteps the potential continuity problem while making that first sentence much more readable and interesting.

The appositive phrase we have discussed above is of the non­restrictive type, which means that it isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence even if it adds important additional information to it. Nonrestrictive appositive phrases are parentheticals that, like non­restrictive relative clauses, need a pair of enclosing commas to set them off from the sentence.

But some appositive phrases are of the restrictive type and they don’t need those commas. We will take them up in the next essay. (January 26, 2008)

The parenthesis and its uses

Part IV

We already know that a parenthesis or parenthetical is basically added information whose distinguishing characteristic is that the sentence remains grammatically correct even without it. So far, however, we have taken up only its first two types, the nonrestrictive relative clause and the nonrestrictive appositive phrase, both of which require enclosing commas to set them off from the sentence. We have also taken up the restrictive relative clause and the restrictive appositive phrase, but we have seen that they aren’t really true parentheticals because they are not expendable—we don’t really have the option to drop them from the sentence.

This time we’ll take up the two other kinds of parentheticals: the parenthesis by dashes, and the parenthesis by parentheses. They differ from the parenthesis by comma in that neither of them can be punctuated properly by a pair of enclosing commas. In their case, though, the use of dashes or parentheses is generally interchangeable and is often a matter of stylistic choice. This choice largely depends on whether the parenthetical is really optional or contextually necessary, perhaps simply an aside; in any case, however, using enclosing commas to set it off is out of the question.

Parenthesis by dashes. This kind of parenthetical normally folds another sentence into a sentence, as in this example: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill—they said they didn’t know it then—but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” What sets off the parenthetical “they said they didn’t know it then” from the main sentence is a pair of double dashes, which indicates a much stronger break in the thought or structure of the sentence than what a pair of enclosing commas can provide.

See what happens when we use commas instead to punctuate that kind of parenthetical: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill, they said they didn’t know it then, but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” The pauses provided by the two commas are much too brief to indicate the sudden shift from the major developing thought to the subordinate idea; structurally, they also truncate the sentence.

If the writer so chooses, however, parentheses may also be used for that same parenthetical: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill (they said they didn’t know it then) but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” When parentheses are used, however, the implication is that the writer doesn’t attach as much importance to the qualifying idea as he or she would when using double dashes instead.

Parenthesis by parentheses. This is the preferred punctuation when the writer wants to convey to the reader that the idea in the parenthetical isn’t really crucial to his exposition, as in this example: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan (the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled) busted one of its pistons.” However, if the writer intends to take up the dealer’s apparently false assurance in some detail later in the exposition, the parenthesis by dashes would be a good foreshadowing device: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan—the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled—busted one of its pistons.”

Parentheticals enclosed by parentheses need not be complete sentences, of course. They can be simple qualifying phrases within or at the tail end of sentences: “Many elective officials (of the dynastic kind, particularly) sometimes forget that they don’t own those positions.” “The disgruntled cashier took the day off (without even filing a leave).”

Even more commonly, parentheses are used to add a fact—maybe a name or number—that’s subordinate or tangential to the rest of the sentence, as in this example: “Recent geologic research (Alvarez, Alvarez et al, 1980) indicates that the dinosaurs went extinct when an asteroid some 10 km in diameter smashed on present-day Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula some 65 million years ago.” (February 9, 2008)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 26 and February 9, 2008, © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.