NO-NONSENSE WAYS TO LEARN TODAY'S GLOBAL LANGUAGE

The Genesis of Corporatese
By Jose A. Carillo

THE habit of writing or speaking English corporatese begins harmlessly enough. It starts with snappy little jargon like “concretize,” “prioritize,” “optimize,” “energize,” “synergize,” and “operationalize.” Then it becomes a mild neurosis of talking and writing in euphemisms and fancy diminutives on one hand, such as describing a particularly big company loss as a “tactical setback” or a “strategic retreat,” and, on the other hand, using equally fancy superlatives such as ‘back-to-basics strategy,” “best-in-class initiatives,” “interactive multidimensional feedback loop,” and the classic ENRON bluster that says “laser-sharp focus on earnings per share.” Then the neurosis quickly grows into an overwhelming compulsion, an inner voice that incessantly whispers to one’s ear that to stay on the clear path to success in the corporate world, one should never catch himself being too honest or too forthright with his English.

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After all, the corporatese spinners would say, it’s only words, English words. Like little sticks and stones they are only words and they couldn’t hurt you. But what the corporate types conveniently forget or put under the rug is that there’s such a thing as executive ethics and responsible corporate governance. You are supposed to be honest and truthful to your colleagues and subordinates. You are supposed to be faithful and true to all the stakeholders of the company who put you on the executive suite: the stockholders, the investors, the customers, the employees and their families, the financial community, the government, and the scores of contractuals who wipe the dust off company desks or turn on the lights in the silent morning and take out the trash and finally turn off the lights in the dead of night.

In the few years that I was a passive observer in the corporate boardroom, I would sometimes see a CEO forget his corporatese in a fit of rage or pique. He would revert to speaking like a human when a new product had failed to get market share or when a much-ballyhooed sales or human resources program had fouled up. “What do I care about those greedy, good-for-nothing yokels?” the CEO would rant. “After all, I do all the work here. Them, they do not move their butts and they own only 30% of the stock cumulatively. My family and friends own the remaining 70%, so I can do as I wish for all I care. After us, the deluge.” But after a minute or two of venting spleen, he would be back to form and spouting corporatese again, obviously hard put and too embarrassed to explain a particularly bad year for his company in plainer terms than this:

“The Corporation reported a loss from continuing operations before income taxes of Php46.2 billion and an income tax provision of Php132 million for the year ended December 31, 1992, compared with income from continuing operations before income taxes of Php33.6 billion and an income tax provision of Php242 million for the year ended December 31, 1991. The effective rate in 1992 was different from the statutory rate primarily because of nondeductible goodwill amortization expense associated with business acquisitions and because of nondeductible goodwill applicable to assets sold. The effective tax rate in 1992 was different from the statutory rate due to the utilization of state tax credits and foreign sales corporation tax benefits that more than offset nondeductible goodwill amortization expense associated with business combinations.”

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Strange, strange, the English and the logic that I see in vastly convoluted statements like these. Their otherworldly quality never fails to overwhelm me. There simply is no way for anyone with less than superhuman intelligence to get a handle of what they are saying in all this gobbledygook. In fact, statements like these give me the nagging suspicion that they are actually inverse fairy tales or, as one chief accountant had blurted out to me in a rare moment of candor, “little masterpieces of corporate fiction.” You can almost be sure that the use of corporatese in these reports is part of a massive and deliberate effort not to make things clear or understood by laymen like us. They want to keep you and me in the dark. Indeed, their glossing over of spectacular failures and the trumpeting of inconsequential or imaginary triumphs are not communication at all but plain and possibly felonious obfuscation.

This obfuscation is more pronounced in the so-called publicly owned companies, which are actually misnomers because only in very rare cases does the public own more than 30% or 40% of them. The bulk and weight of ownership effectively remains in the private hands of the majority owners, who can continue to call the shots in the company no matter how strident some minority stockholders become in their protestations against corporate malpractice. But that is a long, long story and certainly beyond the pale of this discussion of plain and simple English, so I will now stop.

I will simply add that one way out of this Catch-22 situation is to foster a new generation of enlightened and activist minority stockholders. We must, as a matter of right, demand full corporate transparency. Chairs, CEOs, and boards of directors of public corporations must be compelled by law to be open, candid, and honest in their corporate reporting. By fiat they must be forbidden to speak in corporatese ever again in public, just plain and simple English, perhaps even the vernacular. Their English must be bright and luminous as on that clear day, when the king thought he was in regal dress but was actually parading himself about town with not a stitch on.
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The essay above, "The Genesis of Corporatese" appears in Part I - "Our Uses and Misuses of English" of Jose Carillo's book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today's Global Language (Third Updated Edition, 2023; 500 pages), copyright 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. The book is available at National Book Store and Facebook branches in key Philippine cities. For volume orders and overseas deliveries, send e-mail inquiring about pricing and bulk discounts to Manila Times Publishing Corp. at circulation@manilatimes.net, or call Tel. +63285245664 to 67 locals 117 and 222.

MISUSE OF “LIE” AND “LAY” CAN PUNCTURE YOUR COMMAND OF ENGLISH

I - Troublesome English verbs that trip even professional writers

In English, there are two sound-alike and spelled-alike verbs that often cause a lot of confusion--the verb-pair “lie” and “lay.” Indeed, who hasn’t been tripped yet by these two verbs? 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.

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

The verbs “lie” and “lay” often get annoyingly misused because (1) they both consist of three letters and are pronounced almost identically, and (2) it isn't easy to figure out whether they are being used intransitively or transitively. 

Most troublesome is the first “lie,” an intransitive verb which means “to stay at rest horizontally,” followed in troublesomeness by the transitive verb “lay,” which means “to put or set something down.” 

Of course there's another intransitive verb that's also spelled “lie.” It means “to assert something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive.”  As it causes trouble altogether different from that wrought by “lie” and “lay,” we won't take it up here.

The intransitive “lie” is most commonly misused when wrongly forced by the writer or speaker 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”: “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.” Take note that 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.

REVIEW ONE MORE TIME:

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. 

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The discussions above first appeared in a two-part series in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in September 2007, © 2007 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

DEALING WITH QUESTIONABLE OR DOWNRIGHT WRONG LEGALESE

Part I - Proofreading questionable or downright wrong legalese

Sometime in 2015 I received a very well-meaning, constructive letter from a Philippine Supreme Court staffer asking if he could consult me once in a while when he’s in doubt about his work. Part of his job is to proofread court decisions and resolutions drafted by a ponente or the designated writer from among the justices.

The letter-writer, whose name I won’t disclose for obvious reasons, says he’s neither a lawyer nor an English major, so his proofreading is confined to just typos and grammar. “I used to be very strict,” he says. “I’d correct ‘back wages’ or ‘in so far’ into one word, and put a comma or period where I think it’s needed. This is because my idea of proofreading is that it’s for publication purposes, [because once] the document gets printed, you can no longer correct it.”

         PHILIPPINE SUPREME COURT IN SESSION, 2016

The letter-writer cited two very arresting examples (all italicizations mine): “Once, I came across the phrase ‘without authority so to do’ in a quoted Rule of Court. My immediate impulse was to correct it to ‘without authority to do so’ but when I checked with the Rules of Court, I found that it’s how it is written in Rule 27. In another instance, the decision in Diamonon v. DOLE has this phrase, ‘to serve the interests of a justice.’ The ‘a’ is certainly not needed there but you can’t change it because it’s as good as law. This is a very good example of how even the article ‘a’ can change meaning if used improperly.”

My comments as Forum moderator:  I checked those dubious usages and found that “so to do” and an even more curious variant, “to so do,” have precedents in British English and in American jurisprudence. Here’s a “so to do” usage by the University of Oxford: “The Green College Development Office will only issue information about Old Members when those Old Members give written permission so to do.” And here’s a “to so do” usage by a law of the State of Arizona: “Intentionally intercepts the deliberations of a jury or aids, authorizes, employs, procures or permits another to so do.” No matter how awful-sounding they are then, let’s allow both usages to pass unchallenged.

But as to the extraneous “a” in the Diamonon v. DOLE decision, it’s a very serious proofreading error that gives a derogatory sense to an appellate court’s broad discretionary powers in considering matters not assigned as errors on appeal, in effect allowing it to arrive “at a just decision and complete resolution of the case or to serve the interests of a justice or to avoid dispensing piecemeal justice.” The mere thought of a justice making a decision for his or her own self-interest is too subversive to contemplate, so even if that offending “a” now forms part of the Rules of Court, it ought to be knocked off in the interest of justice, semantics, and good sense.

The letter-writer continues: “I began to be more lax when I noticed resentment in my being strict as evidenced by my simple corrections not being implemented, especially when it comes to subject-predicate agreement. This may just be a feeling, but it’s possible that because of their higher educational attainment, lawyers feel bad about being corrected by a nonlawyer.

“To illustrate, when I changed the verb ‘were’ to ‘was’ in the phrase ‘the alluded delay in the completion of the subject project were traceable to…,’ the correction was returned to me marked by an ‘x’ and with ‘the series’ added to ‘traceable’ to justify the use of the verb ‘were.’ (Your opinion, please.) So I just confine myself now to correcting very obvious mistakes, such as ‘the property can only be assessed through a narrow road’ (accessed), ‘hinge of doubt’ (tinge of doubt), and ‘the country’s national resources’ (natural).”  

In Part II, we’ll take up more of his very instructive proofreading predicaments.

Part II - Proofreading questionable or downright wrong legalese

For starters in Part I, I presented a couple of proofreading errors in two Supreme Court rulings that were brought to my attention by one of its staff, part of whose job is to proofread court decisions and resolutions drafted by a ponente or the designated writer from among the justices.* The first glitch is the needless, wickedly subversive presence of the article “a” in a labor dispute ruling, and the second, a rather jolting subject-verb disagreement arising from misuse of the plural “were” in a demand-for-payment ruling.

 PROOFREAD BUT UNCORRECTED ERRORS IN JUDICIAL DECISIONS ARE NOT “INFALLIBLE INADVERTENT ERRORS” BUT MAY BE MORE FITTINGLY CALLED   “SEMANTIC WORMHOLES”

Right off, a reader who goes by the username zyggy asked me online if those “infallible inadvertent errors”—his words, not mine—could be called “loopholes.” I told him I didn’t think so, for a “loophole” is defined as “an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded.”

Since those proofreading errors don’t really constitute a legally or logically defensible ground for such evasion, I suggested that both can be more fittingly called a “semantic wormhole.” That’s a more innocuous term that the Urban Dictionary pejoratively defines—only the “wormhole” part, I must admit—as “a phenomenon that has a way of completely absorbing the attention of its user.”

Now let’s go back to the Supreme Court staffer’s letter and take up the rest of his very instructive proofreading predicaments. Before I forget, though, I still owe the Supreme Court staffer my opinion about his rebuffed proofreading correction of the verb “were” to “was” in the draft of that demand-for-payment ruling, as follows (italicization mine): “As stated in its original decision, it held that the evidence on record categorically showed that the alluded delay in the completion of the subject project were traceable to additional works and change order works required by respondent which were not part of the original agreement.”

His correction, he said in the letter, was returned to him marked by an “x” and with “the series” added to “traceable” to justify the use of the verb “were.”

So here’s my opinion: You were right, and the ponente who refused your proofreading correction from “were” to “was” in that sentence either doesn’t know or forgot how English subject-verb agreement works.

The Supreme Court staffer continues: “In the last decision I proofread, I marked these errata: ‘did not mention of the testimonies’ (delete ‘of’), ‘in the contrary’ (‘in’ to ‘on’) and ‘while it maybe true’ (may be). Happily, the concerned justice’s office adopted my corrections, but as always, I remained uncomfortable until I confirmed these… As you can see, these corrections are those which you would normally miss when you spell-check a document. But since I’m not an English major, sometimes I too am not really sure about the corrections I’ve made. And this is where I seek your help.”

He then presented this third proofreading dilemma: “The minutes I review every week starts with this: ‘The minutes of the preceeding session.’ I had noted that there’s no such word as ‘preceeding’; it should be ‘preceding’ or ‘minutes of the proceedings.’ My correction went unheeded so I just let it be. Am I right or wrong?”

My answer: You’re absolutely right, and the Supreme Court needs to recognize it once and for all for the sake of good English.

And then the letter-writer asked this grammar question, evidently in general and not regarding a particular Supreme Court decision: “What should the verb be in this sentence: ‘He insisted that she (stay, stays, or stayed) in the house’?”

Now I told him that it’s a really, really tough and devilishly equivocal grammar question! Offhand I’ll say that the answer could be the subjunctive “stay,” the indicative present-tense “stays,” or the indicative past-tense “stayed,” but the explanation is so complicated that it needs another column to give it justice.

Part III - A devilishly equivocal grammar question

In Parts I and II, I analyzed a couple of proofreading errors in two Supreme Court rulings that were brought to my attention by one of its staff, part of whose job is to proofread court decisions and resolutions drafted by a ponente or the designated writer from among the justices. Recall that the first glitch he called my attention to was the needless, wickedly subversive presence of the article “a” in a labor dispute ruling, and the second, a rather jolting subject-verb disagreement arising from misuse of the plural “were” in a demand-for-payment ruling.

PROOFREAD BUT UNCORRECTED ERRORS IN JUDICIAL DECISIONS ARE NOT “INFALLIBLE INADVERTENT ERRORS” BUT MAY BE MORE FITTINGLY CALLED “SEMANTIC WORMHOLES”

Right off, a reader who goes by the username zyggy asked me online if those “infallible inadvertent errors”—his words, not mine—could be called “loopholes.” I told him I didn’t think so, for a “loophole” is defined as “an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded.”

Recall that in Part II, I observed that since those proofreading errors don’t really constitute a legally or logically defensible ground for such evasion, I suggested that both can be more fittingly called a “semantic wormhole.” That, I said, is a more innocuous term that the Urban Dictionary pejoratively defines—only the “wormhole” part, I must admit—as “a phenomenon that has a way of completely absorbing the attention of its user.”

Now let’s go back to the Supreme Court staffer’s letter and take up the rest of his very instructive proofreading predicaments.

Before I forget, though, I still owe him my opinion about his rebuffed proofreading correction of the verb “were” to “was” in the draft of that demand-for-payment ruling, as follows (boldfacing mine): “As stated in its original decision, it held that the evidence on record categorically showed that the alluded delay in the completion of the subject project were traceable to additional works and change order works required by respondent which were not part of the original agreement.”

Recall that his correction, as he said in the letter, was returned to him marked by an “x” and with “the series” added to “traceable” to justify the use of the verb “were.”

So here’s my opinion: You were right, and the ponente who refused your proofreading correction from “were” to “was” in that sentence either doesn’t know or forgot how English subject-verb agreement works.

The Supreme Court staffer continues: “In the last decision I proofread, I marked these errata: ‘did not mention of the testimonies’ (delete ‘of’), ‘in the contrary’ (‘in’ to ‘on’) and ‘while it maybe true’ (may be). Happily, the concerned justice’s office adopted my corrections, but as always, I remained uncomfortable until I confirmed these… As you can see, these corrections are those which you would normally miss when you spell-check a document. But since I’m not an English major, sometimes I too am not really sure about the corrections I’ve made. And this is where I seek your help.”

He then presented this third proofreading dilemma: “The minutes I review every week starts with this: ‘The minutes of the preceeding session.’ I had noted that there’s no such word as ‘preceeding’; it should be ‘preceding’ or ‘minutes of the proceedings.’ My correction went unheeded so I just let it be. Am I right or wrong?”

My answer: You’re absolutely right, and the Supreme Court needs to recognize it once and for all for the sake of good English.

And then for last, the letter-writer asked this grammar question, evidently in general and not regarding a particular Supreme Court decision: “What should the verb be in this sentence: ‘He insisted that she (stay, stays or stayed) in the house’?”

Now that’s a really, really tough and devilishly equivocal grammar question! Offhand I’ll say that the answer could be the subjunctive “stay,” the indicative present-tense “stays,” or the indicative past-tense “stayed,” but the explanation is so complicated that it needs another column to give it justice.

Part IV - A devilishly equivocal English grammar question

In Part III, towards the end of my discussion of wormholes in certain Supreme Court rulings and correspondence, I said that the unnamed SC letter-writer who brought them to my attention posed this devilishly equivocal grammar question: “What should the verb be in this sentence: ‘He insisted that she (stay, stays or stayed) in the house’?”

I replied that the answer could be the subjunctive “stay,” the indicative present-tense “stays,” or the indicative past-tense “stayed.”  Since the explanation would involve some grammatical complexities, however, I decided to devote this separate grammatical analysis of this grammar puzzler.

Let me start by rearranging the answer choices for that sentence: “He insisted that she (stays or stayed, stay) in the house.” This will allow us to discuss the more familiar grammar concepts first and work our way to the more complicated ones.

Recall now that there are three moods of verbs in English, mood being that aspect of the verb that expresses the speaker’s state of mind or attitude toward what he or she is saying. These moods are the indicative mood, the imperative mode, and the subjunctive mood. The indicative and imperative both deal with actions or states in factual or real-world situations; in contrast, the subjunctive deals with actions or states as possible, contingent, or conditional outcomes of a want, wish, preference, or uncertainty expressed by the speaker.

The most common and familiar of the three moods is, as we know, the indicative. It conveys the idea that an act or condition is (1) an objective fact, (2) an opinion, or (3) the subject of a question. Indicative statements seek to give the impression that the speaker is talking about real-world situations in a straightforward, truthful manner; their operative verbs take their normal inflections in all the tenses and they follow the subject-verb agreement rule religiously.

Now let’s closely examine the sentence in question when it uses the first answer choice: “He insisted that she stays in the house.” This sentence is perfectly grammatical when it is said or understood as an indicative statement, where the speaker declares in a persistent but straightforward and truthful manner what he believes is an objective fact: that the female referred to currently stays—that’s the verb “stay” taking its normal present-tense inflection—in that particular house.

That sentence is also perfectly grammatical when said or understood as an indicative statement when the verb in the “that”-clause is in the past tense: “He insisted that she stayed in the house.” Here, the speaker declares in a persistent but straightforward and truthful manner what he believes is an objective fact--that the female being referred to stayed for sometime—that’s the verb “stay” taking its normal past-tense inflection—in that particular house.

Finally, let’s now closely examine the sentence in question when it uses the third answer choice: “He insisted that she stay in the house.” There’s now an apparent subject-verb disagreement in the “that”-clause between the singular “she” and the plural-form “stay.” However, if that sentence is said or understood to be subjunctive, it would be grammatically and semantically correct. Indeed, one of the uses of the subjunctive is to denote a speaker’s insistence that a particular action be taken, not that it’s true or factual.  

So then, always keep in mind this rule for subjunctive sentences with a “demand,” “require,” or “insist” main clause followed by a “that”-clause indicating the action to be taken--The operative verb of that clause always takes the subjunctive plural present tense (without the suffix “-s”) whether the doer of the action is singular or plural: “I demand that all of you leave right now.” “The company requires that all job applicants take an IQ test.” And, in the same token, “He insisted that she stay in the house.”

I trust that I have adequately clarified this particular and very unique form of the subjunctive.

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These discussions first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times in several issues from March-April 2015, © 2015 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Write Powerful Expositions By Using Both Basic and Advanced Paragraph Transition Techniques

BASIC AND ADVANCED PARAGRAPH TRANSITION TECHNIQUES 

By this time many of us should already be familiar with the English paragraph and could whip up one or several of them with great ease. The general concept for the paragraph that we normally follow is, of course, that it’s a collection of sentences that all relate to one main idea or topic and that have unity, coherence, and adequate development. This particularly applies to the typical expository paragraph, which starts with a topic sentence or controlling idea that the exposition then explains, develops, or supports with evidence.

As we all know, however, not all paragraphs need a topic sentence; some paragraphs could simply be indicators of breathing or structural pauses in narratives, dialogues, and explanatory statements that are marked for the purpose by a new, usually indented line (digital word processing, of course, now provides a stylistic device to even get rid of indentions, as in this very exposition that you’re reading now). Either way, paragraphs no doubt serve as functional transitions from one set of thoughts to another, and this is where many people—whether beginning writers or professionals who just want to set their thoughts down clearly and logically—get confused as to precisely how transitions between paragraphs should be done.

In “Making Effective Paragraph Transitions,” a four-part series that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2006, I extensively discussed the various techniques that a writer can use to effectively bridge a succeeding paragraph to the one preceding it—a process that I explained works in much the same way as logically bridging adjoining sentences in an exposition. In this week’s blogspot, I am presenting in retrospect all four parts of that series for the benefit of new Forum members and those who missed reading it the first time around. I hope that the discussions will help them gain much greater competence and confidence in the paragraphing craft. (November 9, 2013)

MAKING EFFECTIVE PARAGRAPH TRANSITIONS

Part I – Basic forms of paragraph transitions

Contrary to what some people think, making effective paragraph transitions is really not that difficult. This is because most of the familiar devices we use for linking sentences can serve as transitional devices for paragraphs as well. For instance, such linking words as “besides,” “similarly,” “above all,” and “as a consequence” can effectively bridge a succeeding paragraph to the one preceding it in much the same way that they can bridge adjoining sentences. It’s true that some experienced writers make it part of their craft to minimize the use of these highly visible paragraph “hooks,” but to the beginning writer, they are indispensable for interlocking paragraphs into logical, cohesive, and meaningful compositions.

                          IMAGE CREDIT: PINTEREST.COM
  Highly visible paragraph transition “hooks” for beginning writers

Choosing a paragraph transition is largely determined by which of the following major development tasks the new paragraph is intended to do: (1) amplify a point or add to it, (2) establish a causal relationship, (3) establish a temporal relationship, (4) present an example, (5) make an analogy, (6) provide an alternative, or (7) to concede a point. Once a choice is made, it becomes a simple matter to find a suitable paragraph transition from the very large body of conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases in the English language.

Before discussing the major types of task-oriented paragraph transitions, however, let us put things in better perspective by first looking into two of the most basic forms of paragraph transitions. One way is to simply repeat in the first sentence of a succeeding paragraph the same operative word used in the last sentence of its preceding paragraph, as the word “process” does in this excerpt from William Zinsser’s On Writing Well:

“Ideally the relationship between a writer and an editor should be one of negotiation and trust…The process (underscoring mine), in short, is one in which the writer and the editor proceed through the manuscript together, finding for every problem the solution that best serves the finished article.

“It’s a process (underscoring mine) that can be done just as well over the phone as in person…”

The other basic paragraph transition form is substituting a synonym or similar words for the chosen operative word. For instance, in the passage above, we can use the similar phrase “this kind of review” instead to begin the second paragraph: “This kind of review can be done just as well over the phone as in person…” This transition may not necessarily be better than the first one, but it has the advantage of giving more variety to the prose.

Now we are ready to discuss the task-oriented paragraph transitions.

Amplifying a point or adding to it. If we need to elaborate on an idea at some length, we can effect the transition to a succeeding paragraph by using whichever of the following transitional words and phrases is appropriate: “also,” “moreover,” “furthermore,” “in addition,” “similarly,” “another reason,” and “likewise.”

Establishing a causal relationship. When we want to discuss the result of something described in a preceding paragraph, we can achieve a logical transition by introducing the succeeding paragraph with any of the following transitional words or phrases: “so,” “as a result,” “therefore,” “consequently,” “then,” and “thus.”

Establishing a temporal relationship. This is the easiest paragraph transition to make. We can make the desired chronological order by simply using the following adverbs or adverbial phrases to introduce the succeeding paragraph: “as soon as,” “before,” “afterward,” “after,” “since,” “recently,” “eventually,” “subsequently,” “at the same time,” “next,” “then,” “until,” “last,” “later,” “earlier,” and “thereafter.”

Presenting an example. For this purpose, we can achieve a quick transition by using the following words or phrases to begin the succeeding paragraph: “for instance,” “for example,” “in particular,” “particularly,” “specifically,” and “to illustrate.”

Making an analogy. By using such words as “also,” “likewise,” “similarly,” “in the same manner,” and “analogously,” we can make an effective transition to a succeeding paragraph that intends to make a comparison with what has been taken up in a preceding paragraph.

Providing an alternative. When alternatives to an idea presented in a preceding paragraph need to be discussed, we can introduce them in a succeeding paragraph by using the following transitional words: “however,” “in contrast,” “although,” “though,” “nevertheless,” “but,” “still,” “yet,” “alternatively,” and “on the other hand.”

Conceding a point. An effective strategy to demolish a contrary view is to quickly concede it in a paragraph introduced by such transitional words as “to be sure,” “no doubt,” “granted that,” “although,” and “it is true.” The rest of the paragraph can then present arguments to discredit the wisdom of that contrary view.

For more complex compositions such as essays and dissertations, however, we will usually need more sophisticated paragraph transitions than the conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases we have already taken up above. We will discuss them in detail in Part II of this essay.

Part II – Extrinsic and intrinsic paragraph transitions

Because of its nuts-and-bolts approach to the subject, Part I of this essay must have given the impression that making paragraph transitions is simply a mechanical procedure, a matter of just tacking on a familiar conjunctive adverb or transitional phrase between adjoining paragraphs. This, as we shall soon see, is not the case at all. It just so happens that conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases are the best starting point for discussing the subject, for they have a built-in and overt logic in them that can apply to a very wide range of situations. As we progress to the more complex types of compositions, however, we will need much less obtrusive and more elegant ways of bridging paragraphs into cohesive and meaningful compositions.

There are two general categories of transitions for bridging paragraphs: extrinsic or explicit transitions, and intrinsic or implicit transitions.

Extrinsic or explicit transitions. They primarily rely on such familiar introductory words as “however,” “therefore,” and “moreover” to show how an idea that will follow is related to the one preceding it. The various conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases that we already took up in the previous essay belong to this category.

Transitions of this type are very handy and give paragraphs very strong logical interlocks, but when overused, as in legal documents that employ long strings of “whereases,” “provided thats,” “therefores,” and “henceforths” to drive home a point, their prefabricated logic can become very distracting, annoying, and unsightly. This is why it is advisable to minimize their use in formal compositions. For academic essays and dissertations, in particular, the usual suggested limit is no more than one extrinsic transition for every paragraph and no more than three for every page.

Intrinsic or implicit transitions. This category of transitions, on the other hand, makes use of the natural progression or “flow” of the ideas themselves to link paragraphs logically. Instead of using the usual conjunctive adverbs or transitional phrases, they effect paragraph transitions through a semantic play on key words or ideas in the body of the exposition itself. A sentence that performs an intrinsic paragraph transition usually:

(1) repeats a key word or phrase used in the preceding paragraph and makes it the takeoff point for the succeeding paragraph, or else

(2) uses a synonym or words similar to that key word or phrase to do the transitional job. Part I of this essay already gave examples of this type of paragraph transition.

At this point, we will now complete the picture by adding the pronouns “this,” “that,” “these,” “those,” and “it” to the list of basic implicit transitional devices, for these pronouns can often bridge adjoining paragraphs as effectively while minimizing the distracting overuse of the same nouns in the composition.

To better understand how intrinsic paragraph transitions work, let’s assume that we have already written the following first paragraph for an essay:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.”

Now how do we make an intrinsic transition to the next paragraph of this essay?

The task, of course, basically involves constructing an introductory sentence for that next paragraph. We will now look into the various intrinsic transition strategies for doing this, from the simplest to the more complex ones.

Strategy 1: Use a summary word for an operative idea used in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph.

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

“The idea was at first totally out of the question to me. I was such in a hurry to get back to Manila because of an important prior engagement…”

Strategy 2: Use the pronoun “this” for an operative idea in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph.

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

“This was actually not a very easy decision to make. I had to be in Manila later that week for a business meeting…”

Strategy 3: Use the pronoun “that” for an operative idea in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph.

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

“That proved to be the most memorable part of our tour. Despite my misgivings…”

Strategy 4: Use a more emphatic transition by using “that” to intensify an operative word or idea used in the preceding paragraph.

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

“That decision had very serious and far-reaching consequences for me. I missed an important meeting in Manila and lost a major account…”

Part III – “It,” “such,” and “there” as paragraph transitions

We have already looked into several extrinsic or implicit strategies for making a transition to a new paragraph from the one preceding it. All of these strategies begin the new paragraph with a sentence that either repeats a key word or phrase used in the preceding paragraph, or else substitutes a summary word or pronoun such as “this” or “that” for that key word or phrase. This time we will look into the use of the words “it,” “such,” and “there” as devices for similarly making such paragraph transitions.  

To illustrate how these words work as transitional devices, we will use the same prototype first paragraph that we used in the previous column, as follows:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.”  

Strategy 5:  Use the anticipatory pronoun “it,” otherwise known as the expletive “it,” to begin the new paragraph. We know, of course, that many teachers of writing frown on this usage, claiming that it seriously robs sentences of their vigor. As the two examples below will show, however, this device can be very efficient as a paragraph transition:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

“It was past midnight at our Boracay cottage when my friend suddenly sprung the Palawan idea on me…”

or:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

“It was farthest from my mind that my friend would even think of a Palawan trip just when we were ready to fly to Manila…”

It’s true, however, that too many expletives in a composition can be very distracting, so we must use this paragraph transition device very sparingly.

  

Strategy 6: Use the pronoun “such” in the first sentence of the new paragraph to echo an operative idea in the preceding paragraph.

”As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

 

”Such was what happened to my best-laid plans after my friend chanced upon a Palawan tour brochure…”

We must take note, though, that some grammarians find this use of “such” as a noun semantically objectionable. They would rather use “such” as an adjective or adverb to make such transitions:

”As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

 

”Such a radical departure from our travel plans was very unpalatable, but my friend was so headstrong about it…”

or:

 

”As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

”Such was my consternation about the Palawan idea that I actually considered going back to Manila without my friend…”

Strategy 7: Use the pronoun “there” in the first sentence of the new paragraph to introduce the new idea that will be developed. See how effective this transitional device can be in effecting shifts in time, place, scene, or subject:

”As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

 

”There was a time when I would summarily reject unplanned trips like that…”

or:

”As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

”There was a very compelling reason why I didn’t want to make that Palawan trip, but my friend would hear nothing of it…”

For the same reasons that they shun the expletive “it,” however, many teachers of writing strongly caution against this usage, arguing that it encourages lazy writing. Thus, as a rule for short compositions, more than one paragraph beginning with “there” would probably be too much.

 

We will now go to another type of paragraph transition, one that exhibits both extrinsic and intrinsic properties. The most common transitional devices of this type are the prepositional phrases used to begin the first sentence of paragraphs that set off events by order of occurrence, or to indicate changes in position, location, or point of view. Typically, these prepositional phrases are introduced by a preposition, but unlike such usual stock transitional words or phrases as “before,” “after,” and “as a result,” they carry specific information about the subject being discussed.

 

Some examples:

 

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking the sequence of events: “At 8:00 in the morning…”, “By noon…”, “At 6:00 in the evening…”

 

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking changes in position:  “At sea level…”, “Below sea level…”, “Above sea level…”

 

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking changes in location: “In Manila…”, “In Rome…”, “In London…”

 

Prepositional phrases serving as paragraph transitions marking changes of point of view in the same composition: “As a private citizen…”, “As a professional…”, “As a public official…”

 

To conclude our discussions on paragraph transitions, we will take up in Part IV the so-called “deep-hook” paragraph transitions—the type that blends so effortlessly and so unobtrusively with the developing prose that we hardly notice that the transition is there at all.

Part IV – Deep-hook paragraph transitions

We will now discuss “deep-hook” paragraph transitions—the type that subtly works out its bridging logic by making itself an intrinsic part of the idea being developed. Unlike the usual conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases such as “but,” “however,” and “as a result,” deep-hook paragraph transitions don’t call attention to themselves. They do their job so unobtrusively that readers hardly notice they are there at all.

To show what they are and how they work, we will use the same prototype first paragraph that we used to illustrate the other types of paragraph transitions:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.”

Strategy 8:  Use the last word or phrase of the preceding paragraph as the first word or phrase of the next paragraph, then make it the takeoff point for developing another idea. This is the simplest of the deep-hook paragraph transitions and is most effective when limited to two or three words, such as “unplanned trip to Palawan” in this example:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.  

  

“An unplanned trip to Palawan was farthest from my mind at the time because I was so in a hurry to get back to Manila...”

When it uses too many words, this type of paragraph transition may still work but it tends to be repetitive and clunky.

Strategy 9: Use an earlier word or phrase in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph as the first word or phrase of the next paragraph, then make it the takeoff point for developing another idea.

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

  

“Our tour guide had apparently spared no effort in foisting the outrageous idea on my friend’s impressionable mind...”

Strategy 10: As the next paragraph’s takeoff point for developing another idea, use a word or phrase in a sentence other than the last sentence of the preceding paragraph. To establish its logic, however, this type of paragraph transition usually needs a multiple hook—perhaps two or more operative words or phrases from the preceding paragraph:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longe friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and to the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

“That my friend should specifically insist on Palawan after already visiting several vacation resorts in the Visayas was terribly upsetting to me...”

Here, the multiple hooks are “friend,” “several vacation resorts,” and “Visayas” from the second sentence of our prototype first paragraph, and “Palawan” from its last sentence.

Strategy 11: Use an “idea hook,” one that distills into a single phrase an idea expressed in the preceding paragraph, then use it as takeoff point for developing the next paragraph. This is the subtlest and most sophisticated form of paragraph transition of all, and its skillful use in compositions often indicates how good a writer has become in the writing craft.

Here are two idea hooks for a paragraph that will follow our prototype first paragraph:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

“Giving in to my friend’s utterly capricious idea upset all of my well-laid plans for the remainder of that month...”

or:

“As a traveler, I am a stickler for schedules and will adamantly resist any change in my itinerary, no matter how attractive that change might be. This was my cardinal rule until I accompanied a longtime friend from Paris on a five-day visit to several vacation resorts in Luzon and the Visayas, and for which Boracay Island was to be our final stop. At the last minute, however, on her insistence and egged on by our tour guide, I reluctantly broke my own rule and agreed to join her on an unplanned trip to Palawan.

“That spur-of-the-moment decision led to an experience so delightful that I vowed never again to so doggedly take the well-beaten path in my travels...”

In practice, however, deep-hook paragraph transitions should not be used to the total exclusion of the conventional conjunctive adverbs and transitional phrases. In fact, compositions that use a wide variety of paragraph transitions flow better and are generally more readable than those that use only one type.

This ends the four-part retrospective on “Making Effective Paragraph Transitions.” I hope that the discussion has clarified whatever lingering doubts you might have had about how to properly bridge paragraphs in your expositions.

**********
This four-part exposition first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in four weekly installments from September-October 2013 in the Internet edition of The Manila Times,©2013 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

When English gets laced with legalese and other forms of jargon

Part I:
Taken aback by an English professor's legal writing lecture

A Forum member—I’ll identify him here only as Justine to protect him from possible brickbats—related to me sometime in 2021 that owing to his current work, he had obligated himself to attend a recent lecture on legal writing by an English professor from a prestigious law school.

I was admittedly taken aback when Justine asked me if I would agree with that legal English lecturer’s very contentious rules on the construction and length of sentences and her downright dismissal of the interjection as a legitimate part of speech.

That lecturer’s stern prescriptions are these:

1.  “Yes” can’t be considered as a sentence because a sentence should at least contain three words and should follow an S-V-O pattern;

2.  A sentence must have as much as possible 20 words to be clear, simple and direct; and

3. The interjection shouldn’t be considered as part of speech because, according to a certain F.J.Rahtz, it is just “a noisy utterance like the cry of an animal.”

My reply to Justine:

1. My answer to the first question is a categorical “No!” Definitely, “Yes” qualifies as a sentence. The argument that a sentence “should at least contain three words and... should follow an S-V-O pattern” is so old school and so persnickety. I can only presume that that lecturer is way, way over her senior citizen year—not that I’m not anywhere in or beyond that age bracket myself—or that if she’s a fresh AB English graduate, she must have learned English from a professor way past retirement age to even think of that nonsense definition.

That English lecturer’s overly fastidious pronouncement goes against the grain of the very definition of the term “sentence.” My Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines it as “a word, clause, or phrase or a group of clauses or phrases forming a syntactic unit which expresses an assertion, a question, a command, a wish, an exclamation, or the performance of an action, that in writing usually begins with a capital letter and concludes with appropriate end punctuation, and that in speaking is distinguished by characteristic patterns of stress, pitch, and pauses.”

That definition’s very first two words—“a word”—already qualifies “Yes” as a sentence because even if it’s just one word, it’s naturally written or uttered by someone in response to an understood subject and verb associated with it. The implied “I agree with that” already satisfies the demand of that legal English lecturer that it “follow an S-V-O pattern.” In fact, it even exceeds that basic pattern by an extra word.

2. Regarding your second question, I totally disagree that “a sentence must contain as much as possible 20 words to be clear, simple and direct.” For saying that, I seriously think she should be reported to her school’s law dean to be chastised for grossly wrongheaded teaching on how long or short sentences should be—whether the English is plain, simple English or abstruse legalese. (You may want to send her a link to my Forum posting on “How long should a sentence be to effectively deliver an idea?”     

3. As to your third question, Justine, I won't be drawn into an argument with anyone who thinks that interjections don’t qualify as a part of speech for being just “a noisy utterance like the cry of an animal.” I’m content and won’t quibble with my Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate definition that an interjection is “an ejaculatory utterance usually lacking grammatical connection, as a word or phrase used in exclamation (as ‘Heavens!’ ‘Dear me!’).”

That definition has served me well and had never failed me in all the years that I’ve been using interjections to express shock or delight over the many unexpected things that most everyone encounters in life.

Part II:
A personal working definition of “plain and simple English”

This continues my response to the very staid and draconian English writing rules prescribed by that lady English professor in her legal writing lecture attended by Forum member Justine A. in 2021.

I’ll proceed by giving my personal views but with this caveat: I’m not a lawyer and haven’t dreamed nor aimed to be one. There just may be aspects of English legalese that that professor knows so intimately but that I as a layman really have neither need nor immediate use for.

To avoid misunderstandings, I’m presenting my personal working definition of “plain and simple English” along with authoritative definitions of the terms that will figure in these discussions, namely (1) legalese, (2) jargon, and (3) gobbledygook. 

For plain and simple English, here’s my definition: It’s the human way of speaking and writing in English—simple, clear, sincere, courteous and with absolutely no artifice, pretense, and pomposity. It’s the same everyday English we use when talking face-to-face with people honestly and with mutual respect and trust.

“Legalese” is formally defined by my Merriam Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary as “the specialized language of the legal profession.” Informally, the reference book Oxford Languages defines the term as “the formal and technical language of legal documents that is often hard to understand.”

“Jargon” is formally defined by my Merriam Webster’s 11th Collegiate in four ways: “1 a: confused unintelligible language  b: a strange, outlandish, or barbarous language or dialect c: a hybrid language or dialect simplified in vocabulary and grammar and used for communication between peoples of different speech; 2 : the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group;  3 : obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words.”

          IMAGE CREDIT: EXAMPLES.YOURDICTIONARY.COM

“Gobbledygook” is formally defined by my same dictionary simply as “wordy and generally unintelligible jargon.” More extensively, Oxford Languages defines it as “language that is meaningless or is made unintelligible by excessive use of abstruse technical terms; nonsense.”

                          IMAGE CREDIT: SLIDEPLAYER.COM

From the above definitions, we can safely say that “legalese” is the jargon of lawyers for communicating with fellow lawyers and related practitioners. When using legalese, the lawyer presumes that the reader or listener is adequately knowledgeable with legal concepts that laypeople like you and me would find too wordy for comfort and beyond comprehension.

It’s tempting to say that lawyers use legalese so only they themselves can interpret legal documents or their court pleadings, but that thought would be a patently unfair. More levelheaded is this justification for legalese by an anonymous lawyer-blogger: “In law, words have very specific and clearly defined meanings, and lawyers are careful when drafting legal documents to say precisely what they mean, even if the meaning is only apparent to other lawyers. Some of the word use may appear unusual to people who aren’t familiar with the law, as ordinary words can have a different meaning in a legal context.”

Among Filipino lawyers, I don’t think it’s standard practice to deliberately make contracts and documents wordy, roundabout, and confusing. If they engage in legalese, it could only be the outcome of decades of overzealous, overprecise, and overbearing formulation, interpretation, and application of the law. In fact, there has been a very strong trend in North America and the United Kingdom—they are now huge movements spearheaded by both lawyers and nonpayers—to promote the use of plain and simple English not only in contracts and legal documents but also in court litigation and legislation—the better for laypeople to understand, appreciate, and follow the law.

So I find it truly puzzling why in the recent lecture attended by Justine A., that English professor appears to be headed in the opposite direction by complexifying legal writing with her very staid and draconian prescriptions.

Part III:
When English cum jargon veers toward gibberish or gobbledygook

For nearly two decades now since I started writing this column, I would encounter much too often not only legalese and jargon—the abstruse English of the law and jurisprudence—but also their kindred baffling specimens that I pejoratively label as academese, bureaucratese, and corporatese. At their most incomprehensible extremes, of course, they veer toward the gibberish or nonsense known as gobbledygook.

       IMAGE CREDIT: FACEBOOK.COM/PHIJURISOFFICIAL/PHOTOS

            FORMS OF LEGALESE IN PHILIPPINE JURISPRUDENCE

           (Above, left photo)

           CLEAR, UNDERSTANDABLE LEGALESE:                                              

           Jurisprudence on social justice                                                             

          "The policy of social justice is not intended to                                                          

           countenance wrongdoing simply because                                    

           it is committed by the underprivileged."                                   

           [G.R. No. 184011, September 18, 2013]                                                                                                               

          (Above, right photo)                                                                                     

           TOUGH LEGALESE BORDERING ON JARGON:

           Jurisprudence on marital incapacity

           "Emotional immaturity and irresponsibility could                                                                                                                

           not be equated with psychological Incapacity."

           [G.R. No. 171557, February 12, 2014]

I recall that back in 2003, my son Carlo who was then a high school junior brought to my attention this English sentence that he thought was “very impressive” but couldn’t seem to understand: “Basically, globalization indicates a qualitative deepening of the internationalization process, strengthening the functional and weakening the territorial dimension of development.” 

After quickly going over the sentence, I told him that the educator who wrote that convoluted academese—it was in a scholarly article in a major national newspaper’s op-ed page—probably meant to say this: “Globalization is a deeper form of internationalization, one where a nation’s drive for development becomes more important than its territorial size,” or, in even simpler English, that “A nation can be small but it can become a major world economic power.”

               IMAGE CREDIT: EDUCBA.COM

“That certainly makes sense,” my son said, “but why do these educators say it the way they do? They are writing not only for English experts but also for people like me, aren’t they? Why then use such fuzzy words as ‘qualitative deepening’ and ‘territorial dimension of development’?”

“Son, this article was not written for you,” I replied. “It was probably written with the best intentions for their fellow educators and higher-ups, but somehow it landed on this newspaper without being adapted and edited for readers like us.” 

At least until about 20 years ago—that was before the plain and simple English movement started in the United States—bureaucratese like the sentence that follows below lorded it over in federal trade communication: 

“Purification of unliquidated obligations is essential for the early identification and correction of invalid obligation amounts to ensure full and effective fund utilization.” 

In plain and simple English, that statement is probably saying this: “To make sure that our funds are fully and effectively utilized, unliquidated expenses and invalid claims must be identified and rectified right away.”

                 IMAGE CREDIT: SLIDESERVE.COM

Worse yet is this bureaucratic reply—it almost borders on gobbledygook—by an American military general to a subordinate’s request way back in the 1980s: 

“Because of your predisposition to your position’s productive capacity, it would momentarily be injudicious, as per government standards, to advocate an increment.”

What the military general probably meant to say was simply this: 

“You don’t deserve a pay increase now because of your poor performance in your position.”

But are we in the Philippines any better in our law and jurisprudence by using—if not plain and simple English—at least clear and fathomable legalese? I was hoping that we have made great progress on this aspect until a Forum member brought to my attention this Supreme Court jurisprudence about “consignation” (GR L-8496, April 25, 1956):  

“(T)he disagreement between a lessor and a lessee as to the amount of rent to be paid by a lessee cannot be decided in an action of consignation but in that of forcible entry and unlawful detainer that the lessor institutes when the lessee refuses to pay the lessor the rents that he has fixed for the property.”  

Honestly, I thought the grammar and syntax of that piece of jurisprudence were scrupulously correct and beyond reproach, so I actually made every effort to make its sense clearer. Until this time, though, I’m still scratching my head over the complicated, mind-bending justification for how our very own Supreme Court had ruled in such cases.

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This three-part exposition first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the September 9, 2021 Internet edition of The Manila Times,© 2021 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.