THE THREE SPECIAL FORMS OF THE ENGLISH PRESENT TENSE

The Historical, Literary, and Eternal Present
By Jose A. Carillo 

We deal with the here and now by using the simple present tense: “I work as a translator for a publishing house.” “She sees something sinister in this.” And when we want to express an action that’s happening right now, we use the present progressive tense: “Can’t you see? I am working as hard as I can.” “She is seeing something moving at the ceiling.” Of course, we can also use the simple present to express an often-repeated action or permanent condition: “She takes a break at precisely 10:00 a.m.” “He is totally deaf in the right ear.”

The present tense is obviously the most basic the tenses can get, but we must be aware that in English, the present tense takes three more special forms not necessarily dealing with the immediate present. They are the historical present, the literary present, and the “eternal present” of scientific principles and general truths.

The historical present. This form recounts past events in the present tense to make them more vivid and immediate. Often used in third-person and first-person narratives as well as in dialogue, the historical present is a story-telling technique designed to make audiences or readers imagine they are right at the scene of the unfolding action. 

Feel the immediacy of this passage from Alphonse Daudet’s short story, “A Game of Billiards”:

“The game is fascinating. The balls roll, graze, pass; they rebound. Every moment the play grows more interesting. A flash of light is seen in the sky, and the report of a cannon is heard. A heavy rumbling sound shakes the windows. Everyone starts and casts an uneasy glance about. The Marshal alone remains unmoved.”

We all know, of course, that the historical present is common fare in magazine journalism. Take this lead passage from a 2004 Time Magazine feature on the U.S. presidential campaign:

In the bleak midwinter, Bill Clinton sits in the two-story garage out back, kneading memory into history. He scribbles his memoirs in longhand on legal pads, poring over notes and transcripts of his White House years. For the moment, the deadline is more pressing than raising money for India’s earthquake victims or promoting peace in Northern Ireland or touring Miami nightclubs with Julio Iglesias.

The historical present is also the stuff of dialogue: “And so what does he say about your proposal?” “Well, he says it’s great and needs only a little fine-tuning. He’s particularly delighted by the high potential savings in production costs.” “So what does he tell you about implementation?” “He says it’s a ‘go’ for the second quarter.” “Amazing! That sounds like your idea really knocked him over! He usually first shoots proposals like that to the Corplan guys to see if they can tear it apart.”

The literary present. As a rule, the English language uses the simple present when discussing literature. This follows the academic concept that fiction exists in a timeless world that is best described in the present tense, particularly in discussions of theme, plot, or author’s intent. Take this passage about Filipino novelist N.V.M. Gonzalez’s novel, The Bamboo Dancers:

“In the first chapter, the first-person narrator begins his story by recounting that early summer he was in New York. He has a room all to himself in a place called Fairfield House. He is through with what he calls his ‘American year,’ having just completed work at the Harrington School of Fine Arts...

Then this blurb for the British novelist John Fowles’ novel, The Collector:

“The setting is a lonely cottage in the English countryside. The characters are a brutal, tormented man and the beautiful, aristocratic young woman whom he has taken captive. The story is the struggle of two wills, two ways of being, two paths of desire…”

The “eternal truth” present. This is the English-language convention for stating scientific principles and general truths in the present tense: “Newton’s First Law of Motion holds that a body continues in its state of motion unless compelled by a force to act otherwise.” “The meter is the base unit of length that is equal to the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458th of a second, or about 39.37 inches.” “The sum of the angles of a triangle is always equal to 180 degrees.” “The distance from Earth to Mars is at least 56 million kilometers.”

On the other hand, principles that have proven false must be stated in the past tense: “The phlogiston theory held that an elementary principle, called phlogiston by its proponent, G. H. Stahl, was lost from substances when they burned.” (This theory has been displaced by Antoine Lavoisier’s oxygen theory.)  “The ancients believed that Earth was flat, and that one who stepped beyond its edge would fall into a bottomless abyss.” (We know now that Earth is spherical or, more accurately, spheroid due to the flattening at its poles.)

-------------------------------

The above article is from Chapter 51 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge (Manila Times Publishing, 2009). I have decided to post it here in my Blogspot to answer the many lingering concerns and doubts—all understandably valid in the absence of specific guidance—raised about the variants of the present tense and the application of the normal sequence-of-tenses rule in English.

RUMINATIONS WHILE MUNCHING A SANDWICH ON THE ATLANTIC COAST

The Roots of English 
By Jose A. Carillo 

More than a decade ago, on our way from Washington, D.C., to New York to watch Les Miserables on Broadway, my wife Leonor and I made a side trip to the imposingly neon-lit gaming center of Atlantic City on the East Coast. No, we were not inveterate gamblers out to break the bank at the stately Trump Taj Mahal casino. We were simply being treated to a night out by a wealthy relative who had made a small fortune in the United States by working as many as three day-and-night sales clerking jobs for nearly 20 years. She had given each of us $100 for gambling money, Leonor’s for a try at the slot machines and mine for a sortie at the baccarat tables.

Expectedly, my puny $100 lasted only a few rounds of blackjack. I was actually an embarrassment among the well-heeled players who, as some former and current top Philippine government officials were reputed to do, would bet as high as $20,000 on a single play. I therefore hurriedly left for the slot machines to see how Leonor was doing. Down to her last token, she was in a decidedly foul mood. When she saw me she plunked the metal into the slot machine in a way that plainly meant good riddance, yanked the lever, and stood up to join me. “These things are really designed to dupe you with fierce regularity,” she said. But just as we were leaving, the machine suddenly clanged and a bell started ringing. From the machine’s maw spewed tokens that ran to a few hundred dollars. A minor commotion ensued as an attendant came with a small plastic barrel, scooped the tokens, and brought us to the cashier to change the booty to greenbacks.

Leonor and I gleefully decided to open a U.S. dollar account with our winnings.  Our relative, however, wiser to the ways of the world, admonished us that such wealth earned with no sweat was no good and wouldn’t last. He suggested that to exorcise the bad luck from it, we should instead treat everybody in our entourage to a Big Mac and French fries. I promised to do that after a leisurely stroll on the boardwalk along the coast, near which the surf of the Atlantic Ocean crashed with melodious regularity in the darkness.

Later, as I chomped a Big Mac and looked at some of the bloodshot-eyed gamblers wolfing the same, I was reminded of a story about how the English word “sandwich” came about, and how it came to represent a concept that is probably as popular as “love” and “mother.” The roots of “sandwich” had actually been traced to an odd gambling-related practice in Old England, in the same manner that many Filipinos, whether in the real or figurative sense, can trace their ancestry or parentage to an “anak ng jueteng.” It is told that in the mid-1700s, John Montague, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, got so addicted to gambling that he refused to leave the card table even to eat. He thus would ask his servants to put meat, cheese, and other foodstuff between two slices of bread for him to get by. The Earl’s concoctions were the first of their kind, and in time they were named not after him but after his town. The rest, including my Big Mac, was history.

Let me add as a footnote that Sandwich is a Saxon word that means “sandy place” or “a place in the sand,” which of course has absolutely nothing to do with food. (Or are we really that sure?) And close to Sandwich there was a small village called Ham, which, I must warn you, had got nothing to do with hamburger either; this sandwich variety was first concocted in Hamburg in Germany. The word “ham” actually came from the English word “hamlet,” which means “a small village.” And while we are at it, I might as well tell you that the Anglo-Saxons called a saltwork or a place that produced salt a “wich.” So, it turns out that most if not all of the English towns whose names end in “wich”—such as Northwich, Nantwich, Middlewich, and most likely also Greenwich and Sandwich—once produced salt as a cottage or major industry, like our very own Las Piñas in Parañaque. (Now would you still want to name your new pastry shop Northwich or Southwich?)

All of these ruminations as I dined along the Atlantic Coast prove my little thesis that the roots of English are not as elegant and romantic as many of us colonial-minded Filipinos think. It’s just that far too many English words and icons had relentlessly pummeled our minds since the Americans came to our shores. Many English words we are fond of using—like Crosby (“village where there are crosses,” by being an old Norse word for “village”) and Milton (“farmstead with a mill,” tun being an Old English word for “farmstead”)—are actually as “baduy” and as wedded to the earth as original Tagalog place names like Maasin (“with plenty of salt”), Marulas (“slippery”), Meycauayan (“with some bamboos”), Malinta (“full of leeches”), and Maahas (“infested with snakes”).

I suppose that there were thousands of such Tagalog or vernacular place names that had been blotted out of existence when the Spaniards went on a name-changing spree in our country. You all know that they renamed most of our villages after a saint, such as San Roque, San Agustin, and San Eutiquio and—when the list ran out—even such curiosities as Sta. Mesa and Sta. Cruz. That, of course, is another extremely fascinating story outside of plain and simple English that begs to be told. (2003)

This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple, is part of a collection of my personal essays from mid-2002 to date.

USE AND MISUSE RETROSPECTIVE

A potpourri of dubious English usage
dissected in the Forum 14 years ago

By Jose A. Carillo

From 2010 to 2011 or 14 years ago, the Forum had an informal and wide-ranging colloqium of sorts on dubious or questionable English usage. The participants were an Irish priest doing religious missionary work in the Philippines, a former University of the Philippines-Diliman chancellor, a former Filipino accounting associate professor in Okinawa, and at the time a Europe-based Filipino foreign-service professional. Learn from their lively potpourri of insights on proper English as used in various parts of the world.

IMAGE CREDIT: PINTEREST.CH

MAGE CREDIT: MAXENGLISH.TIPS

The colloquium of sorts got started by the e-mail below sent to the Forum in November of 2010 by Fr. Sean Coyle, an Irish missionary priest based in the Philippines. A native English-speaker from Ireland who had been doing missionary work here 1971, he is the editor of Misyon, the website of the Columban Lay missionaries in the Philippinesn (www.misyononline.com).

Fr. Sean Coyle sent me this e-mail:

Dear Mr Carillo:

If you haven’t done so already, maybe you can address some common mistakes in writing. One is, e.g., 'The church is across McDonalds on Rizal Avenue' instead of 'The church is across from McDonalds...' or, better still, 'The church is opposite McDonalds...'

Then I often come across such things here in the Philippines as 'I was discriminated by the head of the Organization..' instead of 'I was discriminated against by the head of the Organization...' 

Another very common misuse of English here is 'I asked sorry' or 'I asked for an apology' when the very opposite is meant: 'I apologized.'

Another common mistake I often come across  in the [domestic] broadsheets is 'Majority of Filipinos are opposed to...' instead of either 'A majority of...' or 'The majority of...', depending on the context. The word 'majority' should always have either the definite or the indefinite article in front of it, except in headlines.

'Taken cared of' instead of 'taken care of' is one of the most common mistakes.

I often read 'The President’s plane arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport' instead of ‘. . . arrived at Ninoy Aquino...’ You don’t read in American papers 'He arrived at the John Kennedy . . .' or 'He arrived at the JFK' but rather 'He arrived at John Kennedy..' or 'He arrived at JFK...' On the other hand, if the name of the airport isn’t used, the use of the article is proper, e.g.,.'He arrived at the airport'.

Maybe this is due to the influence of the languages of the Philippines that use the preposition 'sa', e.g., in Cebuano, 'Nakaabot siya sa Ninoy Aquino...'

I have come across some very fluent writers of English who nevertheless make grammatical mistakes. I don’t know if there is a good summer course available to give good writers a good grounding in English grammar.

P.S.  I prefer to follow British usage with regard to abbreviations, e.g., 'Mr' instead of 'Mr.' The top English and Irish broadsheets go even further: 'Major-General', for example, becomes 'Maj Gen'. I’m surprised that American-usage is still so old-fashioned in this digital age!

My reply to Fr. Coyle:

Thank you so much for pointing out the English-usage errors you commonly encounter in your readings. I have had occasion to discuss many of those errors myself in my weekly English-usage column in The Manila Times over the past eight years and, lately, also in my English-usage website, Jose Carillo’s English Forum, that I launched in May 2009. I agree with the correct usages you prescribed, and I’m enjoining the members and guests of the Forum to take careful note of them.

The only point where I differ with you is in the matter of your preference for not using the article “the” in sentences like “The President’s plane arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.” I think this stylistic choice is best left to the discretion of the writer or speaker, not prescribed or forced on him or her. As far as I can gather, in both their written and spoken English as well as in the print media, Filipinos automatically put the article “the” before the proper name of international airports as a matter of convention and stylistic choice, and I think it’s best to leave it at that.

On the matter of punctuation: Since you are a native English speaker from Ireland, Fr. Coyle, I made it a point to print your e-mail as is, retaining the exact way you use punctuation marks like the period (it’s the “full stop” in British English, of course), the comma, and the single-quote quotation mark as well as the way you don’t use the period to punctuate abbreviated words like “Mr” and “Maj Gen.” The way you use those punctuation marks is actually very illustrative of how British English differs from American English—the English standard used in the Philippines—in the matter of punctuation alone.

Let me just quickly summarize those punctuation style differences for everybody’s benefit:

1. British English uses single-quote quotation marks, while American English uses double-quote quotation marks; then, for quotes within quoted material, British English uses double-quote quotation marks, while American English uses single-quote quotation marks.

2. British English puts the closing quotation mark inside the period (or “full stop”) that marks the end of a sentence, while American English puts the closing quotation mark outside the period that marks the end of a sentence.

3.  British English puts the comma outside the quotation mark that closes quoted material (whether the quoted material is a statement or a quoted term) before the word outside the quotes that immediately follows it, while American English puts that comma inside the quotation mark in such grammatical constructions.

(Click this link to read my extensive discussion of how American English and British English differ in the way they handle quoted material.)

You say that the American English style for the use of punctuation marks, particularly its preference for putting the period in the abbreviated “Mr.”, is “still so old-fashioned in this digital age” I must say that I disagree with you on this. I think it’s simply a widely accepted grammatical convention that’s no different from the way British English spelled “music” as “musick,” “traffic” as “traffick,” and “check” as “cheque” way back in the early 1800s, until Noah Webster in the United States decided to change them to their simpler spelling that are much more widely used until today. As I said earlier, style in language is a matter of choice and whatever becomes predominantly accepted is the “correct” one.

And like you, Fr. Coyle, I also don’t know if there’s a good summer course currently available in the Philippines to give writers a good grounding in English grammar. Perhaps we should address this question to Forum members who might happen to know of one. In the meantime, if I may be allowed to pitch a little commercial, I would like to suggest as reference my three English-usage books, Give Your English the Winning Edge, English Plain and Simple, and The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar Errors. They deal with practically all of the grammatical mistakes you mentioned—plus so many other interesting things besides about English writing and exposition.

***

Roger Posadas
Re: Some common mistakes in English writing 

Reply #1 on: November 06, 2010

Hi Joe,

To add to Fr. Coyle's list of common Filipino mistakes in English, may I point out the following common mistakes which I often encounter in my students' papers, in newspapers, in street signs, and in some uniforms of traffic officers:

1. "cope up with" instead of cope with

2. "avail of" instead of avail oneself of

3. "request for something" instead of request something

4. "bound to Antipolo" instead of bound for Antipolo

5. "Filipino-Chinese" to refer to Filipinos with Chinese genes instead of the correct term, Chinese-Filipino. A "Filipino-Chinese" is a Filipino immigrant in China just like a "Filipino-American" is a Filipino immigrant in the US.

6. "for a while," used in answering a telephone caller, instead of the correct "just a minute"

7. "result to" instead of "result in"

8. "traffic enforcer" instead of "traffic regulator" or "traffic officer." One can enforce traffic rules but one cannot enforce traffic.

I can cite many more common Filipino mistakes, particularly in English pronunciation, but this list is getting too long. I'm certain that you have already addressed most, if not all, of these mistakes in your previous postings and columns.

Best regards,
Roger Posadas

***

Ms. Aurora Riel-Grimes

Re: Some common mistakes in English writing
November 7, 2010

Ms. Aurora Riel-Grimes in North Carolina sent in by e-mail this feedback about common errors in English writing:

Dear Joe,

Call me “Simple Simon.”

I suspect that most of our errors can be avoided by using short and simpler sentences. I also suspect that we need to learn how and when to use each of the 90+ one-word prepositions.  Such may help retire most of our trite prepositional phrases we call clichés.

For subject-predicate disagreement, it is easy to lose sight of the subject that is amidst wordy clauses, modifiers, and prepositional phrases. 

Misplaced modifiers and clauses suggest that we did not plan to say them before we opened our mouths. They were second thoughts. They should not be forced insertions. They belong in the next sentence. The next sentence will allow us to place the modifier close to the modified, whether before or after.

 

As communicators (writers, speakers), we need not feel like we should say everything in one breath.

Pausing, we may hear how our listeners hear us. We may realize how good, or awkward, or pretentious, or even ludicrous we sound.

***

Fr. Sean Coyle

Re: Some common mistakes in English writing

November 7, 2010

Thanks for your reply to my email. When I became editor of Misyon in 2002 I asked a journalist on the Sunday Business Post, published in Ireland, about 'correct' usage. He told me that each paper has its own style and rules. Publications in Ireland, Britain, Australia and New Zealand follow British usage generally while those here and in the USA use American English. In Canada they use a mixture of both, as far as I know. Having lived in Ireland, the USA, the Philippines, Canada and Britain, I'm sometimes confused about the spelling of certain words such as 'surprise' or 'surprize' and other words that end in 'ise' or 'ize' and also about words such as 'windshield', the British usage for 'windscreen'.

I accept your point about Philippine usage with regard to 'arriving at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport' even though I would never write that myself, nor do I think that 'he arrived at the Heathrow Airport' would be accepted outside this country. However, it is an area where the writer's 'feel' for language comes into play. I would be inclined to write 'He went to the University of San Carlos' because it 'runs' better than 'He went to University of San Carlos'. Yet I would write 'He went to USC' and not 'He went to the USC'.

With regard to quotation marks, British usage allows both, single or double, using the opposite for a quotation within a quotation. I checked today's Irish Independent online and found double quotation marks in one article and single in another.

I've moved towards placing the period or full stop at the end of quotation where logic dictates it should be. I'm not always consistent.

I still think that the convention in American English of using the period at the end of an abbreviation such as 'Mr." is curiously old-fashioned, though correct. It is strange that the country that gave us 'plow' as an alternative to 'plough' and 'labor' instead of 'labour' still sticks to the period where British English has largely, though not totally, discarded it. However, this is not a question of correct or incorrect. For me it's also a question of aesthetics. To me 'Mr Carillo' looks better than 'Mr. Carillo'.

The Dominican Province of the Philippines has a family magazine - I can't remember the title - that doesn't use the period at the end of abbreviations, so I'm not a lone voice. However, I stress that this is not a matter of correct and incorrect. Language is living and would never change or grow if writers and editors didn't make choices.

The closing paragraph of former Chief Justice Panganiban's column, "With Due Respect," in today's PDI* reads:

"As a footnote, may I add that the inquisitorial system is still regularly used in many countries. On the other hand, the adversarial system was introduced to the Philippines by the Americans at the dawn of the 20th century and had been used regularly since the Supreme Court was founded in 1901. As an exception, contempt cases initiated by the judges themselves had always been decided via the inquisitorial method."

Surely 'has' should have been used instead of 'had' since Artemio V. Panganiban was explaining the difference between the adversarial system and the inquisitorial system and when the Supreme Court uses each. 'Had' seems to imply that the Court no longer uses either system.

Thank you for reading this.

Fr Sean Coyle

*PDI - Philippine Daily Inquirer  

***

Gregorsoph

Forum Member Initiate

Re: Some common mistakes in English writing 

Reply #4 on: November 08, 2010

Hi Joe,

To add to Fr. Coyle's list of common Filipino mistakes in English, may I point out the following common mistakes which I often encounter in my students' papers, in newspapers, in street signs, and in some uniforms of traffic officers:

1. "cope up with" instead of cope with

2. "avail of" instead of "avail oneself of"

3. "request for something" instead of "request something"

4. "bound to Antipolo" instead of "bound for Antipolo"

5. "Filipino-Chinese" to refer to Filipinos with Chinese genes instead of the correct term, Chinese- Filipino. A "Filipino-Chinese" is a Filipino immigrant in China just like a "Filipino-American" is a Filipino    immigrant in the US.

6. "for a while", used in answering a telephone caller, instead of the correct "just a minute"

7. "result to" instead of "result in"

8. "traffic enforcer" instead of "traffic regulator" or "traffic officer." One can enforce traffic rules but one cannot enforce traffic.

I can cite many more common Filipino mistakes, particularly in English pronunciation, but this list is getting too long. I'm certain that you have already addressed most, if not all, of these mistakes in your previous postings and columns.

Best regards,
Gregorsoph

***

bance33 
Initiate

Re: Some common mistakes in English writing

Reply #8 on: January 11, 2011

Webster defines "enjoin" as "to command, order someone with authority: to forbid, to prohibit". I remember using this word a long time ago believing it meant the same way as you mean it now. However, my British editor colleague disagreed with the use of the word and when I checked the dictionary, I got Webster's meaning which was not what we wanted (we didn't want to sound arbitrary). I recalled that incident when I saw your use of the word. However, if other dictionaries define "enjoin" as "urging strongly" or "giving instructions" then I agree with you that the use of "enjoin" in that context is just fine. And it's good to know its meaning is not limited to Webster's.

Joe Carillo
Administrator

Re: Some common mistakes in English writing
Reply #9 on: January 13, 2011

That’s right, bance33. Surprisingly, despite being reputed to be more descriptivist and permissive than other dictionaries in its league, the Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary indeed restricts the verb “enjoin” to the following definitions:

enjoin

1 : to direct or impose by authoritative order or with urgent admonition  <enjoined us to be careful>

2 a : FORBID, PROHIBIT  <was enjoined by conscience from telling a lie>  b : to prohibit by a judicial order  : put an injunction on  <a book had been enjoined prior to publication — David Margolick>

synonyms see COMMAND

In contrast, the Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged provides more definitions for “enjoin” and much wider latitude for its usage:

enjoin

vb (tr)

1. to order (someone) to do (something); urge strongly; command

2. to impose or prescribe (a condition, mode of behaviour, etc.)

3. (Law) Law to require (a person) to do or refrain from doing (some act), esp by issuing an injunction

[from Old French enjoindre, from Latin injungere to fasten to, from in-2 + jungere to join]

The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary similarly provides more definitions and senses for “enjoin”:

 

enjoin

• formal to tell someone to do something or to behave in a particular way

[+ to infinitive] We were all enjoined to be on our best behaviour.

He enjoined (= suggested) caution.

• US legal to legally force someone to do something or stop doing something

It’s evident that “enjoin” is used in many more senses than what the Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate has captured in its more restrictive definitions. This shows that the sense of a word in actual usage can prevail over the definitions prescribed for it by particular dictionaries.

(Full disclosure: I use the Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary in CD-ROM as a quick reference for my English-usage columns and Jose Carillo's Emgish Forum, but I don't feel bound by its prescriptions when they don't dovetail with what I personally know to be a word's denotations in actual usage in my own linguistic community.)

THE GRAMMAR OF NUMBERS AND TIME

Your handling of numbers and time
reflects the clarity of your thinking
By Jose A. Carillo

Some people are very finicky with the grammar and the overall look and styling of their English expositions, but they are often very inconsistent and messy in handling their numbers and timekeeping. Rarely do they have a firm system for when numbers should be stated in figures or when they should be spelled out in words, so they end up writing memos, letters, or reports that are often too unsightly and unpleasant to read.

How people handle numbers and time in their prose is, of course, a clear reflection of their mental discipline and the clarity of their thinking. This is why self-respecting companies and institutions adopt a writing stylebook and require everybody in the organization to adhere to its prescriptions. Still, it takes a lot of doing to get everybody to follow that stylebook correctly and religiously, as evidenced by the spotty handling of numbers and time by the scores of writers—even professional journalists and corporate communicators—that I have edited over the years.

That situation was what prompted me to write the essay below, “The Grammar of Numbers and Time,” for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in 2003. I am posting this retrospective here in my blogspot to help people who don’t have or aren’t obliged to follow any stylebook yet to be more systematic in dealing with numbers and time in their written work.

The grammar of numbers and time

A math wizard from Bangalore, India by the name of Shakantula Devi made it to the Guinness Book of Records in 1980 when she mentally multiplied two 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds. This was the arithmetic operation she performed: 7, 686, 369, 774, 870  x  2, 465, 099, 745, 779 = 18, 947, 668, 177, 995, 426, 773, 730. Since then, Ms. Devi had been routinely beating sophisticated computers right in their own turf. In one such contest, she took only 50 seconds to get the 23rd root of a 21-digit number, while the computer took more than a minute to perform the same job.

My point in writing about Ms. Devi’s astounding arithmetic powers is not really to goad lesser mortals to try to emulate her feat, nor to shame the arithmetic-challenged among us to improve their basic computing skills, but simply to encourage people to accord more respect to numbers in their English prose. Take note, for instance, that I did not write the year “1980” in the first paragraph as “The Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Eighty” (as some lawyers are still wont to do even now); that I did not write “13-digit” as “thirteen-digit”; that I did not write “28 seconds” as “twenty-eight seconds”; and that I did not write “23rd” as “twenty-third.” The grammar of numbers and time is not a science—too many national and cultural variations militate against a universal numbers-writing style—but we certainly can minimize unsightly crimes of prose innumeracy by agreeing on a basic numbers stylebook.

Let us begin with two generally accepted rules: (1) numbers from 1 to 10 should be written as words when used in a sentence: “The customer ordered eight red shirts and five blue ones, but returned three browns”; and (2) numbers from 11 upwards in a sentence should be written in figures: “The professor discovered to her dismay that 12 of her pupils were absent, and that 546 of the entire student population did not make it to their classes either.” And if perchance the sentence has numbers ranging from 1 to any number higher than 10, the two rules above still hold even if it means mixing figures and spelled-out numbers: “We counted a total of 800 words in her essay and found ten misspelled words and 17 wrong word choices.”

There are just two notable exceptions to these rules. First, any number that starts a sentence should be written in words: “Thirteen is considered an unlucky number by some people.” “Four hundred eighty-two years ago, a Portuguese explorer stumbled on a group of islands on the Pacific and named it the Archipelago of St. Lazarus.” Second, when numbers are used to list a series of items within a sentence, all such numbers should be written as figures (or digits) even for numbers below 11: “These are the 14 reasons why I won’t live in your city: (1) the traffic is horrible, (2) the overcrowding is simply too much, (3) the cost of living is too high, and… (14) it gets so cold there in winter.”

Many people, of course, after writing out a number in words, indiscriminately repeat them in figures enclosed in parenthesis, as in: “I would like to discuss with you today three (3) aspects of the problem being encountered by four (4) of our regional offices.” Is this correct usage? Definitely not; this kind of absurd overemphasis literally insults the reader. This should be strictly confined to commercial or legal writing, as in writing checks or in preparing affidavits to make sure that nobody can easily monkey around with the numbers: “Pay to Cash: Five Thousand Two Hundred Sixty Pesos Only (PhP5,260.00)” “…for and in consideration of the delivery of Eight Hundred Sixty-Seven (867) pieces of widgets.”

Marking time gives us more latitude in using numbers. We can write, say, “9:00 A.M. (or a.m.)” or “nine o’clock in the morning” depending on the accuracy we want to convey. But most everybody on the planet is agreed that exact dates should be written in numbers, as in “August 24, 1946.”

We have to take up just three more important rules about writing numbers before we close: (1) We should use figures and not spell out numbers immediately before a unit of measure: “a 10-minute wait,” “a 3-3/4 cm. length of tape,” “16 Megahertz on the FM band”; (2) We should use figures and not spell out numbers that represent statistical or mathematical functions or formulas: “divided by 6,” “multiplied by 9,” “a ratio of 50:1,” “8% bigger”; and (3) We should use figures and not spell out numbers that represent time, ages, money, sizes, scores, and points on a scale: “at 12 midnight,” “4 years old,” “$9,” “5 cm. x 12 cm.,” “73:69,” and “Intensity 5 on the Richter Scale.”

We use numbers all the time in our lives, so it pays to do our numbers right.(November 12, 2003) 

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From my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, November 12, 2003 issue, © 2003 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. This essay later became Chapter 129 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR OUR TIMES

Indignities in American Minor
By Jose A. Carillo

This is much too unglamorous to admit, and my wife Leonor actually blanched when she read the first draft of this essay. But I told her firmly that it was a story I had to write once and for all as a cautionary tale for our times. Four years before September 11, 2001, while I was lined up at Los Angeles Customs for my flight back to Manila, U.S. agents took me away and made me strip down to my underwear. It was not a particularly chilly autumn day in the West Coast, and America then was still the carefree blonde in a two-piece, traipsing barefoot on Long Beach, singing an innocent little ditty about freedom and clueless of the horrible outrage that was to befall her four years later. But even with the good heating at the airport I found myself shivering. I simply could not take the frisking and the progressive nakedness with grace and equanimity.

What a shame, I thought, to be put in the same class as the terrorists, mobsters, drug lords, and potbellied politicians who routinely deserved such searches! There I was, clothesless and listless in the City of the Angels, trying with some delicacy to shield with my hands as much of my crotch from the prying eyes that were all over me. But no matter how sophisticated I tried to look and how impeccable the English I used in my protestations, I was a practically naked alien under a host country’s sufferance, and short of begging, at that moment there wasn’t really much I could do to change that fact.

The female agent also asked me to take off my shoes. She did it in probably much the same way that a fellow agent did it to a Filipino senator who, I read in the news just now, went through the same body search recently in San Francisco. I did not refuse nor even make a squeak, however. One reason was that I wasn’t a senator from another country but a nobody. I would never know the pleasure of breezing through Customs without anybody laying as much as a hand on me, even if it was obvious that I carried contraband or a ton of plastic bomb on my belly. But what really took out much of the sting from the indignity was that I was not the only one targeted. And looking back, I realize now that it actually might have been my fault to be zeroed in along with the six who were behind me in the queue.

Aside from wearing my old spring windbreaker that I regularly used for Decembers back home in Manila, I had the bad sense to hand-carry all the way from the East Coast a bulky, heavily padded green winter jacket lined with Teflon. I am actually of the lean sort, but I must have looked like a drug runner laden with cocaine whenever my bulk showed on their surveillance monitors. In any case, they asked me and the six others to step aside: a sixtyish woman in a wheelchair, an Oriental-looking gentleman in a very respectable-looking dark gray suit, and four or five Filipinos with their trademark huge shoulder bags and mountainous backpacks.

The agents led us to a nearby inspection room, and in no time they had efficiently dismantled the wheelchair into a neat pile of tubes and nuts and bolts. They cautiously jiggled and peered inside each tube, but found nothing explosive or incendiary. Then the young, portly female agent, who looked every inch of Filipino parentage, frisked the old woman in the wheelchair, ever politely asking and helping her disengage the strap of her bra. Again there was nothing, not even a little vial of cocaine nor a lipstick case of crack for the effort. Then finally it was my turn. She started frisking me. In the best English that I could muster, I asked her: “Why have you chosen me for this? Do I look like a criminal?” And she replied in the best and most dispassionate Tagalog that she could muster: “Trabaho lang po.  Natiyempuhan lang kayo.” (“Just doing my job, sir. You just happened to be it.”) Finding nothing on me, of course, she said: “Sori sir. Pasensiya na kayo.” (“I’m sorry for this. My apologies for doing it.”) She asked me to put my clothes back on, then waved the dignified-looking man to come forward.

As he started to strip, the man tried his best to look nonchalant about the whole thing, but I noticed that his brow began to sweat and twitch a little. I suddenly had the inkling that the agents would not be disappointed this time. True enough, when the man took off his sando and was down to his briefs, there came into view several thick bundles of U.S. currency, securely bound with masking tape to the front, back, and sides of his torso. There must have several hundred thousands of dollars of the notes on him. “I’m sorry, sir,” the agent said with barely suppressed distaste, “you have attempted to take out currency beyond the $10,000-limit without declaring it, a violation of U.S. law.” She then asked all six of us to go, and began reading the man his Miranda rights.

I may make light of the tough security measures that the U.S. now imposes on citizens and foreigners alike passing through its ports, but I do not really wish to trivialize what September 11 has done to the nation that we once knew as the Land of Milk and Honey. The fact is that September 11 has changed most of America’s icons and rules. And make no mistake about it now, because I say this in all practical seriousness: If you are going to San Francisco or LA or New York or Chicago, it will no longer be enough to wear flowers on your hair or make a “Peace!” sign with your fingers. You better be in your best form and best behavior. Give your paunch and toenails a good trim and don’t forget to wear clean socks. Have a nice haircut, and consider shaving off your prized mustache or goatee. Don’t bank on charm and diplomatic immunity. And remember, practice your English and watch your temper. Nothing will better qualify you for being asked to step aside the Customs queue in LA or San Francisco to be grilled or stripped than an atrocious or non-existent English or, much worse, a flare-up of a monumental ego.

Sadly and forever, as the old refrain goes, everything is different now in America because of September 11. (2003)

This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today's Global Language, is part of a collection of my personal essays  that appeared in my column from mid-2002.

NO-NONSENSE WAYS TO LEARN TODAY'S GLOBAL LANGUAGE

English as Our Language for Business
By Jose A.Carillo

As someone who worked for many years in corporate communication, I am sometimes asked what language would be best for business. Is it that bewildering language called corporatese, which uses stilted and convoluted English like “It has come to the undersigned’s attention that…” or “Yours truly respectfully requests that immediate action be taken on the aforementioned matter”? I must admit that for a while I was so beguiled by such lofty language that I started using it myself. I began to think that to be believed, to be followed, and to get results, you must not write as you would talk. You must use language several notches higher and airier than the English of ordinary mortals. Corporatese was the language of authority, of distinction. You must learn it by heart to be effective, to climb quickly up the corporate ladder.

IMAGE CREDIT: LINKEDIN.COM

In time, however, it dawned on me that corporatese simply could not be the language of business. How could sensible people who want results use such an obtuse, roundabout language? I also discovered that corporatese had become the norm in many companies not because it made communication more effective, but because it had been handed down by generations of executives who did not know any better. So, if not corporatese, what business language then is better? My answer now is this: it all depends on who the audience is. Our language of choice should carefully consider the unique mixture of executives, managers, staff, and workers in an organization. Each of them brings a business language of his own into the organization. The accountant will talk accountese with fellow accountants, the lawyers will talk legalese, the researchers will talk researchese, and the marketing people will talk…well, how about calling it marketingese? The corporation on a typical day is, in fact, a Babel of the argot of every profession, occupation, or trade that finds it way into its fold.

This was the situation when one time, an accountant in the big corporation I worked for jokingly threatened his associates, most of them also accountants, in these exact words in Tagalog: “Huwag kayong magluluko at isang journal entry lang, yari kayong lahat.” [“Don’t fool around with me because I could do you all in with just one journal entry.”] Of course, being a non-accountant and too ashamed to ask, it took me a long time to fully understand that line. You have to know accounting intimately to discover how deliciously malicious that remark is; I will not even attempt to explain it here, so better ask your own friendly accountant what it means.

The point I would like to make is that in that remark, we are up against deep jargon—that short-cut language of professionals and tradesmen to the highly specialized knowledge in their heads. If he didn’t use jargon, it probably would have taken my accountant-friend ten times longer to drive home his point, and the joke would have been lost.

In any case, I actually hated jargon because it was often my job to interpret it painstakingly in writing for lay readers. But soon I learned to tolerate it, especially when I discovered that it was actually the professional’s way of being brief, concise, and to the point when talking business. Also, I saw that when used solely within a circle of peers, jargon could actually be as harmless as the coded language we sometimes cultivate with very close friends.

IMAGE CREDIT: COMPANIESHOUSE.BLOG.GOV.UK

The problem with jargon arises only when professionals and managers habitually use it even when writing or talking to lay people. Then it becomes a serious communication stumbling block. You probably have heard and seen some of those jargon-struck executives guesting on TV or radio, so confident that they look and sound brilliant with their jargon, but actually befuddling us with some of the jargon they say. They are the same people who, back in their organizations, will write corporatese and highly technical memos and letters that need to be painstakingly deciphered word for word, phrase by phrase. They have become so immersed and comfortable with corporatese and jargon that they could not imagine that they have actually become dark harbingers of confusion.

These jargon-fanciers, of course, are unfortunate that they have not yet discovered one thing--that the most successful executives and managers are those who do not publicly use corporatese and who, outside their professional circles, shun jargon like the plague. These executives and managers are the better communicators because they know that the language of business should neither be stilted and obtuse nor technical, but one that, without having to be clarified, can be understood perfectly by most everyone. The language that meets all of these criteria is, of course, plain and simple English. It is the English that knows and respects its audience, no matter who they are. It is, in fact, the superior business language that we have been looking for all this time—not knowing that we already had it and had already been using it all along.

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The above essay on the "The Language of Business" appears in Part III - "Usage and Style" 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 ManilaTimes 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.

GETTING TO KNOW THE ENGLISH MODALS

Don’t let the modal auxiliaries “can,” “could,”
“will,” and “would” baffle you anymore 

Let’s do a quick review of the proper usage of the function words “will” and “would,” “shall” and “should,” and “can” and “could,” which from my experience as an editor continue to be pitfalls to many learners and even some long-time users of English.

The most important thing to keep in mind about these word-pairs is that they aren’t meant for sentences that deal with simple facts or absolute certainties. They are distinct grammatical forms called modal auxiliaries or modals, which work with verbs to convey various shades of necessity, advice, ability, expectation, permission, possibility, or conditionality.

      IMAGE CREDITS: ESLGRAMMAR.ORG (ABOVE LEFT), PINTEREST.COM (ABOVE RIGHT)

“Can” and “could.” These two modals convey the idea of ability, possibility, permission, or potential; “can” is the present-tense form, “could” the past-tense form. Ability: “She can write novels.” “By then she could no longer write novels.” Possibility: “The team can win if its members are more disciplined.” Permission: “Can I go out with my playmates now?” Potential: “With his political acumen, he can be presidential timber.”

The modal “could” is also used to make a deferential or polite request, offer, or suggestion: “Could you tell me how to leave the send-off party now without offending the boss?” But among social, age, or professional coequals, “can” is more suitable: “Can you tell me how to leave the send-off party now without offending the boss?”

“Will” and “would.” The usual function of “will” is as a verbal auxiliary for expressing simple futurity, as in “Evelyn will go to Tokyo tomorrow.” As a modal, however, “will” works to convey choice, willingness, intention, consent, or habitual or customary action. Choice: “I will take the train instead of the bus.” Willingness: “I will go if you wish.” Intention: “I will prove you wrong.” Consent: “Yes, the school will admit you.” Habitual or customary action: “She will get angry over trivial things.”

In the past tense, the modal “will” inflects to “would.”  Choice: “That year, I would fly first class rather than economy.” Willingness: “In my mid-twenties, I would go wherever I was assigned.” Habitual or customary action: “After breaking up with her fiancé, Joanna would get angry over trivial things.”

In conditional sentences, the modal “would” works to express probability or presumption in both present and past, as in “That overambitious politician (would win, would have won) hands down if not for the very serious corruption allegations against him.”

Also, the modal “would” conveys politeness and deference in expressing intent or desire, as in “Would you consider my daughter for that overseas job?” This differs from the rather pointed request conveyed when the modal “will” is used: “Will you consider my daughter for that overseas job?”

As a quick exercise, are “will” and “would” used correctly in this statement: “Will it rain tomorrow? If it wouldn’t, would it be a sunny day?”

Yes, they are correct. The first question uses “will” as a verbal auxiliary to express simple futurity; the second is a conditional construction where (a) the “if”-clause uses the modal “wouldn’t” to express negative possibility, and (b) where the result clause also uses the modal “would” to express expectation of a desired outcome in question form.  

“Shall” and “should.”  In American English (the English used in the Philippines), the modals “shall” and “should” are used sparingly to state polite questions (suggestive that permission is being asked) in the first-person, as in “Should I get a taxi for you now, ma’am?” More commonly, the modal “shall” is used in formal written directives and records of corporate proceedings, as in “All workers shall be responsible for the upkeep of their respective work areas.”

This discussion appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the October 24, 2019 print edition of The Manila Times, © 2019 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.