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.

My misgivings when people wish me to have more power

Not being a politician nor a petty potentate, I don’t relish the idea of people wishing me more power in the closings of their e-mails or snail mails. I know they mean well, but I get the queasy feeling that they don’t really mean it. I just don’t think that “More power!” is to be taken in the same spirit as “All the best!” and “Cheers!” At any rate, I get “More power!” wishes so often in my mail that I decided to express my misgivings with that particular wish in an essay I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in February last year. I am posting that essay in the Forum this week in the hope that when Forum members and guests read it, they would understand why I would greatly welcome being felicitated some other way. (October 23, 2010)

Please don’t wish me ‘More power!’

Some of you may find it odd, but I do wish that friends and readers who keep on wishing me “More power!” in their e-mail closings would stop doing so. Frankly, I feel a tinge of irony or even sarcasm in that expression—even if I know it’s not meant to be that way. It’s just that whenever people wish me “More power!” I get the queasy feeling that they presume that I have an insatiable craving for it, or that I have somehow shown a significant weakening in my writing or in my physical demeanor.

If you want to know why I feel so strongly against the use of “More power!” in correspondence, let me tell you that over a fourth of the e-mails I receive from readers of this column use that expression to felicitate me. And when I made a full-year tally of the closings of the 94 letters to the editor of a monthly magazine for which I made a communication audit in 2008, the score was this: 29 “More powers!” (30.8 percent), 28 all other compliments (29.8 percent), and 37 no compliments at all (39.4 percent).

So this question comes to mind: Why are so many people these days wishing other people “More power!” in this land? Has there been a general weakening in the sinew and spirit of the people that they need to be reminded to display more pep and vigor? Or is there, in fact, a perceived craving for more power among the population that needs to be filled even if only vicariously?

I ask these questions because according to my online Merriam Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, the word “power” still means “possession of control, authority, or influence over others.” So why would anyone even think of wishing someone to have more power than what he or she already has? For purely selfish reasons, wouldn’t it be more natural for people to wish more power for themselves—even if they already have lots of it? What’s the point of unnaturally wishing other people to have more of it?

I actually suspect that this propensity for “More power!” closings is uniquely Filipino. I’ve researched the expression with Google and I didn’t find it in any of the comprehensive lists of English-language letter closings. So I guess that sometime somewhere in these islands, a powerful role model—perhaps a high-profile public figure or some forceful English professor—must have written or uttered that expression and convinced a lot of people that it was socially graceful to use it. Why else would so many people think that saying “More power!” is not only appropriate but also chic and classy?

On the contrary, though, I think “More power!” belongs to the same league as the truncated expression “God bless!” This isn’t a solely Filipino expression, of course, but I can’t help but wonder: Why can’t people say “God bless you!” in full? Using the objectless “God bless!” seems to me a sign that people find saying the full expression embarrassing. And I won’t buy the explanation that people probably only want to make that expression parallel to the expression “Goodbye!” That one has its object built into it—for it’s actually the universally accepted shorthand for “God be with you!”

So then, to my friends and readers, spare me from any more “More powers!” when felicitating me. Wish me “All the best!” or to “Have a nice day!” Send me your “Best wishes!” or “Cheers!” or your “Warmest personal regards!” Wish me to “Be safe, be healthy, be happy!” if you really mean it. But please, don’t wish me “More Power!” ever again. If you continue to do so, your wish might be granted every time and I just might acquire too much power. You won’t like it when I turn into a petty despot, no longer able to see things clearly and responsibly the way I still can right now. (February 28, 2009)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 28, 2009  © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The appropriate way to position subordinate clauses and phrases

The serious student of writing in English soon discovers that formal expository writing and newspaper journalism differ profoundly in their approach to subordination and word order. Formal exposition like the essay uses the “upright pyramid” mode, meaning that it starts with contextual or foundation ideas first and builds up to the conclusion—an approach that has the effect of having the more important information presented later instead of earlier at the sentence level and in the composition as a whole. In contrast, newswriting uses the so-called “inverted pyramid” mode of presenting information—it generally tells the reader the conclusion first, follows it with the most important supporting information, then continues the story by giving aspects of its background in an order of diminishing importance. This different approach to subordination and word order normally confuses a lot of beginning writers, and their inability to recognize the difference often results in badly constructed sentences and confusing compositions as well.

It was for this reason that I wrote a two-part essay, “Subordination and word order in English,” for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in February 2009. By discussing the differences between expository writing and news writing, I hoped to help writers in general and entry-level journalists in particular routinely avoid the often serious problems in grammar, semantics, and logic that they sometimes unknowingly commit in their day-to-day writing. This time, for the benefit of Forum members and guests, I have combined the two-part essay into just one for posting in this week’s edition of the Forum. (October 16, 2010)

Subordination and word order in English

We all know that in English, the main clause of a sentence is generally more important than a subordinate clause or phrase, but many of you must have wondered which position is most appropriate for a subordinate clause or phrase—up front, at the tail end, or elsewhere in the sentence?

Consider this sentence from an Agence France-Presse news dispatch, for instance: “Resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations, in what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition.”

Here, of course, it’s obvious that the main clause is “resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations,” and that the subordinate element is “in what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition.”

But what about positioning that subordinate element up front instead? The construction seems to read just as well: “In what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition, resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations.” And the meaning also stays perfectly intact if the subordinate element is placed neatly within the main clause: “Resource-hungry nations, in what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition, are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations.”

So, we might as well ask once and for all, what’s the definitive rule for positioning subordinate clauses and phrases?

There are two general grammatical principles for conveying the relative importance of ideas in a sentence. The first, which I have already invoked above, is that ideas expressed in main clauses are generally more important than those in subordinate ones. This rule is, of course, so self-evident that it doesn’t merit further discussion. But the second rule is likely to throw many newspaper reporters and newspaper readers off balance, for it says so counterintuitively that an idea or information given later in a sentence is usually more important than those given earlier.

Indeed, following this second rule, it would seem that by being back-shifted in the sentence I have given as an example, the subordinate element “in what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition” assumes more importance than the main clause, “resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations.”

But this clearly contradicts the first rule, which says that ideas expressed in main clauses are generally more important than those in subordinate clauses and phrases. If we were to scrupulously follow the two rules, in fact, the optimal position of the subordinate clause in that sentence would be up front: “In what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition, resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations.”

So why then does the Agence France-Presse lead sentence seemingly violate the twin rules on subordination and word order?

The reason is this: newspaper journalism differs profoundly from formal exposition when it comes to indicating the relative importance of ideas in a sentence. As we all know, the typical news story uses the so-called “inverted pyramid” mode of presenting information. This approach to storytelling tells the reader the conclusion first, follows it with the most important supporting information, then continues the story by giving aspects of its background in an order of diminishing importance.

In contrast, formal exposition uses the “upright pyramid” mode, meaning that it starts with contextual or foundation ideas first and builds up to the conclusion. It is therefore not surprising that in formal expository writing, the more important information in a sentence—and in the exposition as a whole for that matter—tends to be presented later instead of earlier.

This front-shifting, of course, follows the general rule in English subordination and word order that information given later in a sentence is usually more important than that given earlier. Thus, in formal exposition, the subordinate element in that sentence given as an example above normally gets front-shifted as follows: “In what activists say is a ‘land grab’ that will worsen poverty and malnutrition, resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations.”

As a stand-alone construction, the above sentence that front-shifts the subordinate element is semantically equivalent to the earlier sentence that back-shifts that same subordinate element. There’s hardly any difference in their meaning. However, when writers back-shift subordinate clauses and phrases indiscriminately, as so often happens in straight-news reporting, very serious problems in semantics and logic can arise.

Indeed, injudicious back-shifting often produces misplaced modifiers, those improperly positioned words, phrases, or clauses that make sentences sound awkward, confusing, or downright absurd and illogical.

Consider the following three problematic lead sentences from recent news stories:

(1) “Half of Metro Manila may have to wait a while longer before enjoying the benefits of having a wastewater treatment facility after regulators deferred the increase in rates.”

Here, the back-shifting of the subordinate clause “after regulators deferred the increase in rates” makes it nonsensically modify the phrase “having a wastewater treatment facility.” The correct, logical position of that subordinate clause is, of course, up front in that sentence, where it can modify the whole main clause instead: “After regulators deferred the increase in water rates, half of Metro Manila may have to wait a while longer before it can enjoy the benefits of having a wastewater treatment facility.”

(2) “The spokesman did not disclose the details of the operation to ensure the safety of the hostages.”

Here, the backshifting of the prepositional phrase “to ensure the safety of the hostages” makes it wrongly modify the noun “operation,” giving the sentence a cockeyed, absurd sense. The intended sense clearly emerges when that prepositional phrase is front-shifted: “To ensure the safety of the hostages, the spokesman did not disclose the details of the operation.”

(3) “Around 190 solons are expected to support and petition for the immediate passage of a measure seeking to rehabilitate and utilize the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant when Congress resumes session on Monday.”

Here, the back-shifting of the subordinate clause “when Congress resumes session on Monday” makes it wrongly modify the prepositional phrase “to rehabilitate and utilize the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant,” thus muddling up the time frame for the actions described in the sentence. The correct sense emerges when that subordinate clause is front-shifted so it can relate to the whole main clause instead: “When Congress resumes session on Monday, around 190 solons are expected to support and petition for the immediate passage of a measure seeking to rehabilitate and utilize the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.”

It should be clear by now that when done indiscriminately, back-shifting subordinate clauses and phrases can be extremely hazardous to our writing. We thus need to be more judicious in constructing our sentences to ensure that our expositions are semantically and logically flawless at all times.

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 7 and 14, 2009, © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Steeling ourselves against common subject-verb disagreement pitfalls

In last week’s edition of My Media English Watch, I reported this very serious grammar faux pas—a Facebook friend of mine called it an “epic fail”—in the front-page headline story of one of the leading Metro Manila broadsheets: “The president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines on Wednesday reminded President Aquino III that providing contraceptives to poor couples who opt for artificial birth control face excommunication from the church.” (Italicization mine).

I already did a detailed grammar postmortem of that sentence in the Forum, including an analysis of the egregious subject-verb disagreement in its subordinate clause, but I think it would be worthwhile for Forum members to steel themselves once and for all against such subject-verb agreement pitfalls. I therefore decided to post in this week’s Forum an essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in May last year, “Common subject-verb agreement pitfalls,” where I explained why both native and nonnative English speakers often commit such errors and how we can methodically avoid committing them.  

Here now for your continuing guidance is that essay (October 9, 2010).

Common subject-verb agreement pitfalls

A Baguio City-based reader, Dr. Antonio Bautista, raised the following interesting question about subject-verb agreement sometime ago.

Which one is correct, he asked, “The plural of nouns are formed in a number of different ways,” or “The plural of nouns is formed in a number of different ways”? And could you say, “The plurals of nouns are formed in a number of different ways”? The first is a direct quote from a book entitled Master English Grammar in 28 Days.

In my reply to Tony, I said that the first sentence is grammatically incorrect. The operative subject of the sentence is the singular noun “plural,” not the plural noun “nouns,” so the operative verb should be “is,” not “are.” The second sentence is the correct one. The third sentence is also grammatically correct because the plural-form verb “are” agrees in number with the plural noun “plurals.” (I must note belatedly, however, that the concept of “the plural of nouns” being notionally singular, it is more advisable to always treat it as grammatically singular—without the “s” in “plural.” Indeed, strictly speaking, the plurality of nouns as a concept is inherently singular.)    

The basic English grammar rule that applies here is, of course, that the verb should always agree in number with its subject: it should take the singular form when the subject is singular, and the plural form when the subject is plural. Quite often, though, this rule gets violated when the operative verb of a sentence is not close to its subject. Indeed, the farther they are from each other, the harder it is to figure out whether to use the singular or plural form of the verb.

This is what happened in that grammatically flawed sentence Tony sent in for analysis. The author was apparently distracted by the words “of nouns” separating the verb “are formed” from its true subject, the noun “plural,” which he must have thought was an adjective. In fact, it was being used as a noun for the form denoting “more than one.”

To avoid this very common grammatical error, we need to more closely inspect the form of the subject in a sentence before deciding whether it is singular or plural. As we all know, a multiword subject in a sentence typically takes any of three forms: noun phrase, gerund phrase, or infinitive phrase.

If the subject is a noun phrase, we need to figure out first which word in it is the operative noun; we shouldn’t be distracted by other nouns that may intrude in the phrase. For instance, in this sentence, “The lingering dispute between the second cousins [is, are] getting worse with each passing day,” the noun “second cousins” gets in the way between the verb and the noun “dispute.” It is clear, though, that the subject of the sentence, the noun phrase “the lingering dispute between the second cousins,” is singular, so the verb form should also be singular: “is getting.”

If the subject of a sentence is a gerund phrase, it is always singular no matter how long the modifying phrase that follows it might be. For instance, in this sentence, “Looking for my friend at the churchyard among the thousands of kneeling devotees [was, were] like looking for a needle in a haystack,” the singular “was” is the correct choice. This is because the gerund phrase “looking for my friend at the churchyard among the thousands of kneeling devotees,” despite its length and long modifier, is undoubtedly singular.

Infinitive phrases, like gerund phrases, are also always singular when used as the subject of a sentence, no matter how long the modifying phrase that follows them might be.

Consider this sentence: “To seek reelection in the face of harsh and widespread criticisms against her many official blunders [does, do] not appeal to the incumbent provincial governor.” The correct choice here is “does” because the infinitive phrase “to seek reelection in the face of harsh and widespread criticisms against her many official blunders,” despite its length and complicating noun phrases, is undoubtedly singular. (May 23, 2009)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, May 23, 2009, © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

A unified approach to the use of punctuation in English – Part III

As with all the alphabet-based languages, English is primarily dependent on word choices and their combinations for the successful delivery of ideas. In written form, however, English would be so clunky and insufferably confusing without the benefit of punctuation. Whether short or long, in fact, what makes sentences and expositions in English eminently readable and understandable is their proper use of punctuation marks—whether the comma, semicolon, colon, dash, parenthesis, or period—to clarify meaning and set off boundaries between structural units of the sentence.

But precisely when do we use each of these punctuation marks in our sentences and expositions? And in particular, which of the punctuation marks do we use to set off a parenthetical—by definition, any inserted amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence—from a main sentence?

In “The parenthesis and its uses,” a six-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2008, I attempted to come up with a unified answer to all of these questions. I did so in the course of explaining the various grammatical and structural considerations involved in punctuating parentheticals. I posted the first part of those wide-ranging discussions in last week’s edition of the Forum; this time I am posting the second of the three-part series (October 2, 2010).

The parenthesis and its uses: parenthesis by dashes and parenthesis by parentheses

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 aren’t 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 and adequately 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—perhaps simply an aside—or contextually necessary; 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 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.

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.” Note, though, that when parentheses are used, the implication is that the writer doesn’t attach as much importance to the qualifying idea as he would when he uses 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 a 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.”

Now that I’m done discussing the parenthesis by parentheses, I would like to take this opportunity to make a clear distinction between parentheses and brackets in American English. As I’ve earlier discussed, parentheses—sometimes called “round brackets”—are meant to convey to the reader that (1) the idea in the parenthetical isn’t really crucial to the sentence, and that (2) the writer doesn’t attach as much importance to the qualifying idea as he would when he sets them off with double dashes instead.

In contrast, brackets—also known as “square brackets”—are for more specialized uses, particularly for (1) inserting information or authorial comment into direct quotations, (2) inserting translations of quoted statements said in another language, (3) citing errors within quoted statements, and (4) setting off a parenthetical that’s already set off by parentheses in the sentence.

Precisely when is bracket Usage #1 called for? Assume that we are quoting verbatim a passage from Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quijote in reference to Dulcinea, his imagined Empress of La Mancha. Let’s say that the passage uses only pronouns to refer to Dulcinea, and we know that it isn’t permissible to alter exact quotes from a literary work. We then have to use brackets to insert information identifying Dulcinea for our readers: “‘If I were to show her [Dulcinea, his imagined Empress of La Mancha] to you,’ answered Don Quijote, ‘what merit would there be in acknowledging a truth so manifest to all? The important point is that you should believe, confess, affirm, swear, and defend it without setting eyes on her.’”

As for bracket Usage #2, a publication in a particular language, say English, will need brackets to insert translations of quoted statements said in another language, say Tagalog, as in the following passage from a business magazine: “‘Hindi lang kulang, kapos na kapos talaga [It’s been not only short but way, way below our needs],’ she says of the family’s finances.’”

Bracket Usage #3 is called for when we have to cite errors in quoted statements, as in this example: “Our confused physics teacher said, ‘While eating an apple in a bathtub, Isaac Newton [by traditional accounts it was actually Archimedes] shouted “Eureka!” when he discovered the basic principle of hydrostatics.’”

Finally, we may need to take recourse to bracket Usage #4 to set off a parenthetical that’s already set off by parentheses, as in this example: “The life of Marcus Tullius Cicero (who wrote three major philosophical studies [On the Orator, On the Republic, and On the Laws] at a time that he still couldn’t engage in politics) coincided with the decline and fall of the Roman Republic.” Such usage isn’t a pretty sight, but there are times when scholarly exactitude demands it.

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This ends the three-part series on the parenthesis and its uses.

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 9 and February 16, 2008, © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.