Monday, December 31, 2012

The versatility of free relative clauses in modifying our ideas


In “Crafting more elegant prose with free modifiers,” an essay of mine that I posted here last December 2, 2012, I showed how we can craft more elegant English prose by making good use of the so-called free modifiers instead of bound modifiers. To highlight the difference between these two, I likened a bound modifier to an animal species that has already perfected itself genetically, thus arriving at its evolutionary dead-end; in contrast, I said that free relative clauses form part of the wide gene pool of language that makes infinite permutations of thought possible.

This time, in “Making good use of free relative clauses,” an essay that I wrote for my daily English-usage column in The Manila Times on February 26, 2004, we will take an even closer look at the great versatility of this grammar device in modifying ideas. This is the last of the seven essays on grammar strategies for crafting more readable and compelling sentences that I have posted here from June 2012 onwards.

 

Making good use of free relative clauses


In the preceding chapter, we compared a bound modifier to an animal species that has already arrived at its evolutionary dead-end, and a free relative modifier to a species that partakes of a wide gene pool for its further evolution. This was in the context of the power of free relative clauses to expand ideas beyond the limits of the usual subject-verb-predicate format. We saw that while bound relative clauses simply affirm the identity of a subject noun, free relative clauses expand ideas in any way the writer or speaker deems suitable to his exposition.

There’s a handy guide for spotting the two: most bound relative clauses that refer to non-persons are introduced by “that,” while most free relative clauses that refer to non-persons are introduced by “which”: “The sedan that you delivered to me last week is a lousy clunker!” “That sedan, which you told me would be the best my money can buy, is a lousy clunker!” Notice how self-contained and peremptory the first sentence is, and how awkward it would be to add any more ideas to it (better to start all over again with a new sentence!).

In contrast, marvel at how the second sentence readily lends itself to further elaboration: “That sedan, which you told me would be the best my money can buy, which you bragged would give me the smoothest ride, and which you claimed would make me the most sophisticated-looking motorist in town, is a lousy clunker!” We can add even more “which” clauses to that sentence in direct proportion to the speaker’s anger and indignation, and still be sure that the speaker won’t be gasping for air when he gives vent to them.

We must be aware, though, that bound relative clauses are sometimes not that easy to spot in a sentence. Recall that we learned to routinely knock off “that” from relative clauses as part of our prose-streamlining regimen. Thus, the bound-clause-using sentence above would most likely present itself in this guise: “The sedan [that] you delivered to me last week is a lousy clunker!” This, as we know, is a neat disappearing act that “which” can oftentimes also do to link free relative clauses smoothly with main clauses.

But what really makes free relative clauses most valuable to prose is their ability to position themselves most anywhere in a sentence—at the beginning, in the middle, or at the tail end—with hardly any change in meaning; bound relative clauses simply can’t do that. We can better understand that semantic attribute by using three ways to combine sentences using the free-relative-clause construction technique. Take these two sentences: “The new junior executive has been very astute in his moves. He has been quietly working to form alliances with the various division managers.”

Our first construction puts the relative clause right at the beginning of the sentence: “Working quietly to form alliances with the various division managers, the new junior executive has been very astute in his moves.” The second puts it smack in the middle: “The new junior executive, working quietly to form alliances with the various division managers, has been very astute in his moves.” And the third puts it at the very tail end: “The new junior executive has been very astute in his moves, quietly working to form alliances with the various division managers.”

The wonder is that all three constructions yield elegant sentences that mean precisely the same thing—sentences that look, sound, and feel much better than when they are forced into bound-modifier straightjackets like this: “The new junior executive who is working quietly to form alliances with the various division managers has been very astute in his moves.”

We can see clearly now that free relative clauses work in much the same way as resumptive and summative modifiers: they allow us to effortlessly extend the line of thought of a sentence without losing coherence and cohesion and without creating unsightly sprawl. However, free relative clauses differ from them in one major functional attribute: they specifically modify a subject of a particular verb.

In contrast, resumptive modifiers pick up any noun, verb, or adjective from a main clause and elaborate on them with relative clauses, while summative modifiers make a recap of what has been said in the previous clause and develop it with another line of thought altogether. Free relative clauses specifically need verbs to start off thoughts that elaborate on the subject of the main clause: “She loves me deeply, showing it in the way she moves, hinting it in the way she looks at me.”

We can attach more and more free relative clauses to that sentence, but the point has been made: using free relative clauses is—short of poetry—one of the closest ways we can ever get to achieving elegance in our prose.
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 26, 2004 issue © 2004 by Manila Times Publishing. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 64 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

The power of free modifiers to make ideas more expansive


From June 2012 onwards I have presented here in this blog six grammar strategies for crafting more readable and compelling sentences, namely (1) the use of synonyms to enliven prose, (2) the use of reference words to avoid unduly repeating ourselves when driving home a point, (3) the use of demonstrative reference words to make what we are saying more immediate and forceful, (4) the use of repeated action and sequence words to give punch and sparkle to our statements, (5) the use of resumptive modifiers to dramatically improve the organization of our ideas, and (6) the use of summative to eliminate verbal sprawl and make our sentences more emphatic.

This time, for the seventh in this blog’s series of grammar strategies for effective writing, I’ll show how we can craft more elegant English prose by making good use of the so-called free modifiers. In the essay below that I wrote for my daily English-usage column in The Manila Times in February of 2004, we will first survey the entire universe of modifiers in the English language, after which we’ll zero in on the eight forms of free modifiers and take up how each of them does its modifying job. (December 2, 2012)

Crafting more elegant prose with free modifiers

To better appreciate the value of free modifiers, particularly of the kind that works in the same league as resumptive modifiers and summative modifiers, we must first survey the entire universe of modifiers in the English language. We will recall, to begin with, that there are two basic types of modifiers: the bound modifier and the free modifier. Bound modifiers are those that are essential to the meaning of a clause or sentence, as the relative clause “those that are essential to the meaning of the sentence” in this particular sentence is essential to its main clause. Without that relative clause, the main clause and the sentence itself cannot exist; all we will have is the meaningless fragment “bound modifiers are.”

On the other hand, in that same sentence, the long phrase that begins with “…as the relative clause” and ends with “…essential to its main clause” is a free modifier. We can knock it off and it will not even be missed in the sentence that will be left: “Bound modifiers are those that are essential to the meaning of a clause or sentence.” The sentence has shed off a substantial chunk of itself, of course, as a lizard might lose its tail and yet grow it again someday, but otherwise nothing serious or untoward has happened to its semantic health.

One distinctive feature of bound modifiers is that they are not set off from the rest of the sentence; they normally form an unbroken chain of words that ends with a period, or pauses with a comma or some other punctuation mark. Free modifiers, on the other hand, are set off by commas most of the time, as the comparative clause “a lizard might lose its tail and yet grow it again someday” finds itself hemmed in by two commas in the sentence we examined earlier. Not to have those two commas, or not to have at least one of them in what we will call their frontline acts, would make free modifiers such a disruptive nuisance or outright killers of sense and meaning.

Now that we are about to examine their semantic structures in detail, we might as well make a quick review of the eight forms free modifiers usually take to do their job. Those forms have familiar and largely self-explanatory names: subordinate clauses, infinitive phrases, verb clusters, noun clusters, adjective clusters, appositives, absolutes, and free relative clauses. For a better understanding of them, let’s now look at sentences that use the various forms of free modifiers (shown in italics):

Subordinate clause: “You may leave now even if you haven’t finished your work yet.”

Infinitive phrase:To win this bout, you must knock him out in this round.”

Verb cluster, a crossover pattern that puts the “-ing” form of verbs into modifying-clause mode: “Taking the cue, the buffoon withdrew his candidacy.”

Noun cluster, a crossover pattern that puts the second noun from a main clause into modifying-clause mode: “A veteran of many campaign seasons, the aging politician knows the turf that well.” (Its basic, rather convoluted form: “The aging politician is a veteran of many campaign seasons who knows the turf that well.”)

Adjective cluster, a crossover pattern that puts an adjective or a verb’s past-participle form into modifying-clause mode: “Desperate over the taunts about her academic deficiencies, the woman withdrew her job application.”

Appositive, the nifty description that we insert between nouns and their verbs: “The widow, a pale ghost of her old self, wailed at her husband’s funeral.”

Absolute nominative, which puts the passive-voice verb into the “-ing” or past-participle form and knocks off the helping verb: “All hope gone, the soldier beat a hasty retreat.”

Free relative clauses. I have deferred discussion of free relative clauses for last because we’ll be giving them much fuller treatment than the rest. There is a special reason for giving them a much closer look. Free relative clauses, along with resumptive modifiers and summative modifiers, are actually among the most powerful tools available to us for achieving clarity and coherence as well as elegance in our prose.

We will first focus on the power of free relative clauses to expand ideas in a sentence way beyond the limits of the usual subject-verb-predicate format. As we already know, a bound modifier is limited to identifying the noun form that precedes or follows it in a clause, as in this example: “The Makati City executive with whom I had a heated traffic altercation last month is now my friend.”

The long italicized clause in the sentence above is actually a bound modifier that closes the sentence in an airtight loop. Every word in that clause is essential to its own meaning and that of the whole sentence. We can liken a bound modifier to an animal species that has already perfected itself genetically, thus arriving at its evolutionary dead-end. Free relative clauses, in contrast, form part of the wide gene pool of language that makes infinite permutations of thought possible.

We will explore that idea in greater detail in the next Forum update.
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 25, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 63 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Using summative modifiers for more emphatic sentences


Previously, I presented in this Forum an essay of mine showing how resumptive modifiers can dramatically improve the organization of our ideas and make our sentences more readable and compelling. Now, as the sixth in the Forum’s series of grammar strategies for expository writing, I’ll be presenting the advanced sentence-development technique of using summative modifiers.

In the essay below that I wrote for my daily English-usage column in The Manila Times in January of 2004, we will see that as good as the resumptive modifier is in doing its job, it finds worthy competition in the summative modifier for achieving the same objective. We already know that to eliminate verbal sprawl and to make a sentence more emphatic, a resumptive modifier does away with relative clauses by repeating a key phrase used in a preceding clause of the sentence. In contrast, the summative modifier does the same job by introducing an altogether new word or phrase that sums up a core idea of the preceding clause, then makes that word or phrase the thematic subject of succeeding relative clauses.

Go read the essay now to see precisely how the summative modifier works and how you might find good use for it in your own written and spoken English. (October 7, 2012)

The usefulness of summative modifiers


Using relative clauses is a very convenient way to load sentences with more information. They do their job quite well when only one or two of them are involved, as in this sentence: “The car that figured in the smashup ran through the red light, first hitting the sedan, which rolled over on impact.” The first relative clause in the sentence is, of course, “that figured in the smashup,” modifying “car”; the second is “which rolled over on impact,” modifying “sedan.”

When we attach more and more relative clauses to the sentence, however, ambiguity and monotony start getting into the picture. The sentence becomes progressively confusing until it breaks into an incomprehensible sprawl. See, for instance, what the addition of three more relative clauses does to the sentence given as example above: “The car that figured in the smashup ran through the red light, first hitting the incoming sedan, which rolled over on impact, hitting in turn a van that was parked on the side of the road, which then hurtled toward eight joggers having breakfast at the sidewalk café.” This time, we have produced a mishmash of vague antecedents and linkages—a clear sign of a serious relative-clause overload.

We have already seen how a good resumptive modifier straightens out this messy and confusing state of affairs. By using, say, “smashup” as a resumptive modifier, we can construct this compelling, admirably coherent rendition of the same sentence:

A car that ran through the red light figured in a terrible smashup, a smashup that made an incoming sedan roll over on impact, a smashup so strong the sedan hit a parked van and sent it hurtling toward eight joggers having breakfast at a sidewalk café.

Not even the most well-organized string of relative clauses in the world can match the drama of this resumptive-modifier-using sentence.

As good as the resumptive modifier is in doing its job, it finds worthy competition in another semantic device for that same assignment. That device is the summative modifier. Instead of repeating a key phrase used in a preceding clause of the sentence, a summative modifier introduces an altogether new word or phrase that sums up a core idea of the preceding clause, then makes that word or phrase the thematic subject of succeeding relative clauses.

The phrase “tragic accident,” for example, works as a summative modifier in this alternative rendition of our previous example:

A car that ran through the red light figured in a terrible smashup, a tragic accident in which the wayward vehicle first hit an incoming sedan, creating a domino effect that made the sedan roll over and slam on a parked van, which in turn hurtled toward eight joggers having breakfast at a sidewalk café.

This sentence packs an even more powerful wallop than the resumptive-modifier version, principally because its summative modifier offers even more graphic and more compelling imagery than the resumptive modifier used in the other sentence.

Let’s take a closer look at the mechanism of the summative modifier. We can see that this device positions itself right after a pause created by a comma at the end of a sentence segment. It comes in the form of a noun or noun phrase that concisely—and very quickly—recapitulates a major idea presented earlier in the sentence, and a relative clause in turn elaborates on it with new information. There isn’t much room in a sentence for long, extended summative modifiers; the best ones are single summary words or very short noun phrases of perhaps two to three words. To make summary modifiers longer than this only serves to arrest the momentum of the exposition, defeating the very reason for using them in the first place.

Look what happens when a summative modifier gets too long for comfort:

A car that ran through the red light yesterday figured in a terrible smashup, a tragic accident of such horrendous proportions and repercussions in which the wayward vehicle first hit an incoming sedan, creating an unparalleled, bizarre, and gory domino effect that made it roll over and slam on a parked van, which in turn hurtled toward eight joggers having breakfast at a sidewalk café.

The extended noun phrases “a tragic accident of such horrendous proportions and repercussions” and “an unparalleled, bizarre, and gory domino effect” invalidate themselves as summative modifiers because of their excessive length and ponderousness.

The summative modifier is meant to help us avoid ambiguity and monotony in our prose, not to create confusion and introduce tedium to it. It’s an excellent sentence extender but it doesn’t tolerate delay or hesitance in execution. So long as we keep this in mind, the summative modifier—like the resumptive modifier—can make our writing much better organized and more expressive than it can ever be with only plain relative clauses at our command.
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 25, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 62 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

The magic that resumptive modifiers can do to our English


During these past two months, I have presented here in the Forum four basic grammar strategies and techniques for crafting more readable and compelling sentences: the use of synonyms to enliven prose, the reference word strategy for avoiding repetitive use of the same nouns, the use of the demonstrative reference words, and the use of repeated action and sequence words. This time, I’ll now go to the advanced sentence-development techniques for giving more substance and feeling to our sentences: the use of resumptive modifiers, the use of summative modifiers, and the use of free modifiers.

As the fifth in the Forum’s series of pointers for expository writing, I am now posting for starters the composite essay below, “The Usefulness of Resumptive Modifiers,” that I wrote for my daily English-usage column in The Manila Times in January of 2004. The essay shows that far better than relative clauses, resumptive modifiers can dramatically improve the organization of our ideas and make our sentences much more readable and compelling. (September 2, 2012)

The usefulness of resumptive modifiers

Useful as the four basic grammar strategies and techniques are for crafting more readable and compelling sentences, they are not all we need to write really good prose. In fact, indiscriminate reliance on them can hook us to a lifetime of plain and simple but thoroughly unexpressive writing. So this time, to better equip ourselves against producing stiff, dreary, and uncompelling prose, we will take up three highly effective techniques for giving flesh and feeling to our sentences without running them to the ground and without getting our thoughts entangled in verbal sprawl. These advanced sentence-development techniques are the use of resumptive modifiers, the use of summative modifiers, and the use of free modifiers.

Let’s begin with resumptive modifiers, a device that can dramatically improve our organization of ideas while packing emotional wallop into our sentences.

The best way to understand what resumptive modifiers are and how they work is to scrutinize a sentence that uses a string of relative clauses. Here’s one such sentence: “The incumbent provincial governor is being seriously threatened by an upstart with absolutely no public service experience who is being propped up by a ragtag band of political discards who are desperate to recover lost glory and whose qualifications for the post are at best doubtful or downright spurious.”

With such a jawbreaker of a sentence, figuring out who does which and what modifies which can be infuriatingly difficult indeed! This is because the sprawl created by the multiple relative clauses has horribly garbled the ideas in the sentence and weakened the linkages between them.

Now see what happens when we restructure that sentence by using the noun phrase “an upstart” to take the role of the reference relative pronoun: “The incumbent provincial governor is being seriously threatened by an upstart with absolutely no public service experience, an upstart being propped up by a ragtag band of political discards who are desperate to recover lost glory, an upstart whose qualifications for the post are at best doubtful or downright spurious.”

The key phrase “an upstart” in this new sentence is what is called a resumptive modifier, and its virtue is that: (1) it allows the elimination of the relative links “who is” and “whose” to make the sentence more concise, (2) it arrests the verbal sprawl of the original sentence by making its ideas more clear-cut and their procession more orderly, and (3) it makes the sentence more expressive and forceful. Note that as a resumptive modifier, “an upstart” replaced the unexpressive linking phrases “who is” and “whose” to become the subject or theme of the modifying phrases that come after it.

Let’s now generalize the steps for making resumptive modifiers decongest and perk up sentences that are badly encumbered by relative clauses: first, at or near the end of the main clause, find a key word or phrase that can serve as a resumptive modifier; second, repeat that key word or phrase so it becomes the pivotal subject or theme of all the relative phrases that come after the main clause; and third, have that key word or phrase modified by those relative phrases.

A resumptive modifier can take the form of a noun, a verb, or an adjective central to the idea of the main clause, like the noun “woman” in this sentence: “She was a woman of a few thoughts, a woman of a few words, a woman with not a single bit of true feeling or informed opinion in her.” Contrast that sentence with this one that’s overly laden with relative clauses: “She was a woman who was capable of only a few thoughts, who was capable of saying only a few words, and who did not have a single bit of true feeling or informed opinion in her.”

Verbs and adjectives can also be freely used as resumptive modifiers. See how the verb “threatens” serves as a resumptive modifier in this sentence: “An upstart with absolutely no political experience threatens to dislodge the incumbent provincial governor by capitalizing on his immense popularity, threatens to resurrect political discards desperate to recover their lost glory, and threatens to win by a landslide in a province dominated by voters beguiled by his phenomenal mass appeal.”

And then, see how the adjectives “real” and “serious” work as resumptive modifiers in this variation of the sentence above: “The threat to the incumbent provincial governor by the inexperienced political upstart is both real and serious, real because of the continuing deterioration of the economic life of the province, and serious because the upstart is immensely popular among the impoverished provincial folk.”

The beauty in using resumptive modifiers is that, aside from being a powerful tool for clarifying and emphasizing ideas, they also make it so easy to add information to sentences. They allow the widest latitude possible for developing a chosen theme and going into new directions of thought within the same sentence—and all that without missing a beat or making readers gasping for air. This is what makes resumptive modifiers superior to most other modifying devices in organizing sentences and in fighting sprawl.

We will see this superiority more clearly when we compare how two of the usual sentence-organizing techniques fare against resumptive modifiers in extracting sense from the usual meandering prose that passes for academic writing these days.

Take this breathtakingly convoluted sentence:

According to a leading Filipino social scientist, the public has to have a clear appreciation of the factors that have brought about the primacy of celluloid popularity in gaining a foothold on Philippine voting preferences, of which the most outstanding characteristic is the profound tendency of Filipinos to identify very strongly with their favorite movie heroes, which in turn makes them embrace the latter’s make-believe ability to solve life’s problems in two hours or less as the real thing.

This 79-word behemoth, as we can see, needs nothing less than major surgery.

First, as a newspaper journalist might do it, we will boil that sentence down into the bite-size sentences that go with the obligatory inverted-pyramid structure of most newspaper reporting:

A Filipino social scientist has urged the public to clearly understand why celluloid popularity has gained such a strong foothold on Philippine voting preferences. He said that Filipinos have such a profound tendency to identify with their favorite movie heroes, which makes them actually think that the latter’s make-believe ability to solve life’s problems in two hours or less is for real.

The reconstruction is clear and not really bad, if all we are after is bland objectivity.

Second, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of an opinion writer sold to the limitless utility of relative clauses:

We must seriously ponder a leading Filipino social scientist’s admonition that the public should have a clearer appreciation of why celluloid popularity has gained such a strong foothold on Philippine voting preferences, a situation which, of course, stems from the fact that Filipinos identify very strongly with their favorite movie heroes, as a result of which they embrace make-believe ability to solve life’s problems in two hours or less as the real thing itself.

Said with more conviction perhaps, but the deadly sprawl of the relative clauses still makes the sentence teeter on the edges of incomprehension.

Now, for our third and last recourse, we will use resumptive modifiers to see if they can whip up the original sentence into better shape and give it more verve. Let us pick, say, “celluloid popularity” as the resumptive modifier and use it to get rid of most of the relative pronouns in the sentence:

We have to seriously ponder a leading Filipino social scientist’s admonition that the public should clearly understand why Filipinos are so strongly influenced by celluloid popularity in their voting preferences, a celluloid popularity that makes them identify so strongly with their movie heroes, a celluloid popularity that makes them embrace make-believe ability to solve life’s problems in two hours or less as the real thing itself.

The ideas in the sentence have remained complex, of course, but they are much clearer and they flow much better than the original and the previous two rewrites. More than that, however, something amazing has happened to the sentence as a result of using a resumptive modifier. It now seems not only to have a greater ring and rhythm of truth to it but also the strong sense of conviction of someone who truly believes every word he says. This, other than better organization and clarity and verve, is the magic that a good resumptive modifier brings to prose.
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This posting combines two essays that appeared consecutively in the daily column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the February 23 and 24, 2004 issues of The Manila Times © 2004 by Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. The two essays subsequently appeared as Chapters 60 and 61 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Handy words to make our English more immediate and more forceful


As the fourth in a series of pointers for crafting more readable and compelling compositions, I am posting in this week’s edition of the Forum the essay below, “Using the demonstrative reference words,” that I wrote for my weekly English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2004. The discussion focuses on those handy words we can use so we don’t have to repeat ourselves to drive home a point and, even more important, to make what we are saying more immediate and forceful. They are, of course, the demonstrative adjectives, the demonstrative pronouns, and the demonstrative adverbs. All of us are supposed to have already internalized these reference words in our conversational English as early as in grade school, but if you happen to be one of those who had not become totally proficient in using them for one reason or another (perhaps due to youthful inattention or an ineffective grammar teacher), this review should be able to fill whatever gaps there might be your mastery of them. (July 29, 2012)

Using the demonstrative reference words


This time, our back-to-the-basics review of English composition brings us to the demonstrative reference words—those handy words we use so we don’t have to repeat ourselves to drive home a point and, even more important, to make what we are saying more immediate and forceful. As some of you may recall, the three categories of these reference words are the demonstrative adjectives, the demonstrative pronouns, and the demonstrative adverbs.

Demonstrative adjectives. This category consists of the modifiers “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those.” These words belong to the class of function words called determiners, which serve to either identify nouns or word groups functioning as nouns or give additional information about them (the non-demonstrative determiners “a,” “an,” and “the” also belong to this class). We will remember that the demonstrative adjectives always agree in number with the nouns they modify—“this” and “that” for singular nouns, as in “this apple” and “that woman,” and “these” and “those” for plural nouns, as in “those apples” and “those women.”

The demonstrative adjectives “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those” are also called the pointing words. They indicate how near or far an object is from the person describing it, and are particularly useful in spoken language, where the speaker can actually point to the objects or allude to them by tone of voice. See the big difference these pointing words make: “That car salesman over there is recommending this model to me instead of that model over there, but I think all of these models offered by this dealer are priced much higher than those offered by the other dealer downtown.”

Look at the statement now without the demonstrative adjectives: “The car salesman is recommending one model to me instead of another model, but I think all the models offered by the dealer are priced much higher than the models offered by the other dealer downtown.” The sense of identity, immediacy, and proximity evoked by the first sentence is gone, clear proof that the judicious use of demonstrative adjectives truly gives verve to language.

The demonstrative adjectives work as well even if the speaker or writer isn’t actually present at the place where the objects being described are found. When adroitly used in narratives or expository writing, these pointing words can actually allow the reader to relive the writer’s experience, as if the reader himself was present at the scene.

Take this narrative passage:

There was this lovely woman beside me at the bus stop during this pounding rain, and right in front of us were these three men who looked like thugs, eying us with a menace that you could actually feel. Those moments made me think that it was the better part of valor to flee—never mind what could happen to that woman beside me—but these two thoughts stopped me from taking that action: “What will happen to this woman if I left her behind? Will I ever get over this shameful act of cowardice that I am about to do now?”
Demonstrative pronouns. When the reference words “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those” point to specific things independently without latching on to specific nouns, they function as demonstrative pronouns instead. This is the case with the pointing words in the following sentences: “This is the variety of apples I mentioned to you last night.” “That is the director that launched a thousand acting careers.” “I don’t like these any more than you do.” “Those are a few of my favorite things.”

We can clearly see that demonstrative pronouns are particularly suited to spoken prose, when the speaker can actually point to the objects he is describing, whether near or far from where he speaks. In writing, however, we can’t point as easily to a particular object or noun, so we need a clear antecedent noun to establish the identity of the object that the demonstrative pronoun has replaced: “The man’s eldest son passed the entrance test to the state university. That made him easily the happiest father in the small farming town.”

When such a link to an antecedent noun can’t be clearly established from the preceding sentences, it becomes advisable to supply a new noun. This is where the demonstrative adjectives come in handy; they modify the new or repeated nouns instead of replacing them: “That feat of his son made him easily the happiest father in the small farming town.”

Demonstrative adverbs. This class of reference words includes such adverbs as “here,” “there,” “then,” “thus,” and “hence.” These words can handily take on the role of those places or situations that the listener or reader already knows, or those earlier described in a narrative and other forms of expository prose, thus avoiding the need to present them again: “As I told you before, I want you here, not there. You were a free agent then, but not anymore. You will thus be reporting to me directly until six months hence, when your contract expires.”
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 7, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 56 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Basic but powerful grammar devices for cohesion and clarity


As the third in a series of pointers for crafting more readable and compelling compositions, I am posting in this week’s edition of the Forum the essay below, “Using repeated action and sequence words,” that I wrote for my weekly English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2004. The discussion focuses on simple but powerful grammar devices in English for giving greater cohesion and clarity to writing and speaking. As I’m sure many of us already know, what these devices do is to represent or point back to ideas, elements, events, or situations presented or described earlier in the composition—thus sparing the reader or listener from the tedium of going through the same set of words and phrases all over again. The happy result is, of course, more concise and more lucid expositions.

Find out now if, in fact, you haven’t been using the whole repertoire of these repeated action and sequence words all these years. If so, it’s not too late to make them give punch and sparkle to your written and spoken English. (July 22, 2012)

Using repeated action and sequence words

For a much better handle on English usage, let’s go further back this time to the basics of English composition. Let’s review the uses of the so-called repeated action words and sequence words, those simple but powerful grammar devices for giving greater cohesion and clarity to writing.

Repeated action reference words. These words become standard equipment very early among English-language learners: “so,” “that,” “these,” “those,” “such,” “too,” “does,” “do,” and “did,” “the same,” “likewise,” “either” and “neither,” and “not.” What they do is to represent or point back to ideas, elements, events, or situations presented or described earlier in the composition. We must always keep in mind, though, that these reference words shouldn’t be used by themselves alone; they should be judiciously combined with important words or phrases previously used in the sentence or paragraph.

Let’s now review how these repeated action reference words work:

“So.” A statement might look like this in its full-blown form: “Everybody is learning how to use the personal computer. You should also be learning how to use the personal computer yourself.” By using “so” as a repeated action reference word, that repetitious statement can be made more concise and forceful: “Everybody is learning how to use the personal computer; so should you.”

“That.” Take a look at this overwrought statement: “He has been in turns a farmer, bus driver, newspaperman, communication specialist, and entrepreneur. The shaping of his unique world view by having been all of these things is what he considers the story of his life.” See how the reference word “that” makes short shrift of the repetitious statement and gives the sentence more drama: “The shaping of his unique world view by having been in turns a farmer, bus driver, newspaperman, communication specialist, and entrepreneur—that he considers as the story of his life.”

“These” and “those.” These two reference words efficiently emphasize enumerative sequences: “Coffee, toast, orange marmalade, and fried eggs—these are the only things I take for breakfast.” “A villa in Palermo, a castle in Austria, a resort house in Capri, a townhouse in Athens—all those the marauding government official had to give up when he was convicted of plunder.”

“It.” This familiar, all-purpose pronoun can be used as a reference word for inanimate things or concepts previously mentioned in a composition: “He ran for public office thrice and lost each time; it was the worst humiliation of his life.”

“Such.” This word is a highly emphatic recapitulating device: “She bought five books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, three by Isabel Allende, and one by Pablo Coelho all at once—such was her fascination with Latin-American literature.”

“Too.” An excellent word for avoiding a repetition of similar attributes: “The woman’s vagabond lover was convicted of the grisly crime; the woman, too, got convicted.”

“Does,” “do,” “did.” These repeated action reference words eliminate the need to restate previously mentioned actions: “The groom loves riding horses; so does his bride.” “Not a few people want an intelligent president; so do we.” “She left right after midnight; so did I.”

“The same” and “likewise.”  These two work in practically the same way: “We ordered six cases of champagne yesterday; we want double of the same today.” “Our team worked overtime on New Year’s Eve; their team did likewise.”

“Either” and “neither.” These words efficiently recapitulate the acceptance or rejection of two previously mentioned choices: “Between the astral blue or apple-red sedan, either will do.” “Hong Kong or Singapore at this time of year? I want neither.”

“Not.” Negation of a statement can be done very efficiently by this repeated action reference word: “Most think that going to Baguio City at this time of year is great; not me.”

Sequence words. As we all know, “the former” and “the latter” are the two most common reference words for concisely showing the order of two previously mentioned elements, situations, and events. Both words imply a certain relation between those elements, situations, or events: “Christmas Day and New Year’s Day came and went, the former with a burst of piety and generosity, the latter with a bang and expectations of better things to come.” The reference word “former,” of course, refers to “Christmas Day,” and the reference word “latter,” to “New Year’s Day.”

We can see that repeated action reference words and sequence words not only tie up sentences and paragraphs neatly together, but also help emphasize the ideas being put forth in the composition. For beginning writers, this is as good a start as any towards concise, emphatic writing.
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 9, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 55 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2004 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Writing is a craft that requires precision in our word choices


Constructing grammatically and structurally correct sentences is a must in writing, but we all know that this isn’t enough to command and retain the attention of the reader. We need to come up with clear, readable, and compelling sentences for our expositions—a craft that requires precision in our choice of words as carriers of the thoughts and ideas that we want to share. English being a particularly rich language, with thousands upon thousands of words that mean more or less the same thing, we must develop the knack for choosing the word that best captures the sense that we want to convey. Obviously, this needs more than just a passing acquaintance with the definitions of words and their synonyms. Indeed, to be effective writers, we must make a continuing and purposive effort to widen our English vocabulary. For the wider and richer our vocabulary, the better we will be able to differentiate between the various meanings, senses, and nuances of words and their synonyms, and the better, livelier, and more interesting our writing will be.

It was to bring home this point that I wrote the essay below, “Using synonyms to enliven prose,” for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in January of 2004. I am now posting it in the Forum as part of a series of back-to-basics lessons in writing that I intend to present in this section in the next several weeks. (June 10, 2012)  

Using synonyms to enliven prose 

The French novelist Gustave Flaubert believed that only one word could give justice to a particular thing—“le mot juste”—and he obsessively searched for it before committing himself on paper. He may well have been right. After all, short of deliberately destroying the thing itself, there really isn’t much we can do to change its fundamental nature. Thus, in the English language, an “apple” will remain an “apple” till it’s eaten and digested, and “Eve” will remain “Eve” even after she has eaten that apple and is cast away from Paradise. Fortunately for us, however, there’s really no semantic law forbidding us to call an “apple” or “Eve” by some other word the next time it figures in our thoughts or on our tongues.

How dreary language, communication, and literature would be, in fact, if Flaubert’s prescription for words—like what is generally believed as the preferred French prescription for kissing—were to be followed to the letter! Then we would have to contend every time with the tedium of going through passages like this:

The apple is the popular edible fruit of the apple tree. The apple has the scientific name Malus sylvestris and belongs to the family Rosaceae. The apple is widely cultivated in temperate climates. The apple has more than 7,000 varieties but only 40 are commercially important, and the most popular apple variety in the U.S. is called Delicious. Apples are of three main types: cooking apples, dessert apples, and apples for making cider.

Using synonyms or similar words in place of a particular key word is actually one of the most powerful devices for giving zest and substance to language. Along with the other reference word techniques that we have already learned, they help ensure that our listeners or readers won’t tune us out because of boredom. Synonyms, while not exactly le mot juste, allow us to clarify meaning by focusing on the word’s specific attributes, thus throwing new light on the same idea. They make laborious, complicated explanations unnecessary; as in painting, well-chosen single words or short phrases are quick brush strokes that illumine ideas or clarify meaning and intent. As Peter Mark Roget, author of Roget’s Thesaurus, remarked in his introduction to the revolutionary book in 1852: “Some felicitous expression thus introduced will frequently open the mind of the reader to a whole vista of collateral ideas.”

Indeed, see what happens to the dreary apple passage above when we take Roget’s prescription to heart:

The apple, the mythical fruit often associated with the beginnings of the world and mankind, is the popular fruit of the tree of the same name. The fleshy, edible pome—usually of red, yellow, or green color—has the scientific name Malus sylvestris and belongs to the family Rosaceae. As a cousin of the garden rose, it has the same usually prickly shrub with feather-shaped leaves and five-petaled flowers. It is widely cultivated as a fruit crop in temperate climates. More than 7,000 varieties of the species are known but only 40 are commercially important, and its most popular variety in the U.S. is called Delicious. The fruit is of three main types: the cooking apple, the dessert apple, and the type for making cider.

This revised passage uses a total of eight apple synonyms and similar words: “popular fruit,” “tree of the same name,” “pome,” “a cousin of the garden rose,” “a fruit crop,” “species,” “variety,” and “the type”—each one capturing a new shade of meaning, aspect, connotation, or denotation of the apple and throwing the idea of the word “apple” in bolder relief.

We must beware, however, that synonyms can only establish contexts, not definitions; they may help illuminate discourse but not offer an analysis of things. For instance, in the revised apple passage, the synonyms used will be useful only to the extent that each of them is already understood by the listeners or readers. All of the apple-related words used—except “pome”—work very well as synonyms in the passage because they are of common knowledge; depending on the target audience, however, “pome” may need some clarifying amplification. (A pome, for those confounded by the word, is “a fleshy fruit with an outer thickened fleshy layer and a central core with usually five seeds enclosed in a capsule.”) The speaker or writer must ultimately decide if such amplification is needed.

When using synonyms, we also must make sure that their antecedent words—whether nouns, pronouns, or verbs—are clear all throughout. There is always the danger of overdoing the word replacements, particularly when the conceptual link between the original sword and the synonym is not strong enough. In that case, repeating the original word or using the obvious pronoun for it—“he,” “she,” “it,” “they,” or “them”—may be more advisable. Go over the revised apple passage again and see how the pronoun “it” for apple was used twice to provide such a link and continuity.
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 12, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Clarifying some key terms in the impeachment process


By now most everybody should already have a clear idea of what “impeachment” means. In the ongoing proceedings against Philippine Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, it means “charging a public official before a competent tribunal with misconduct with the view of removing him or her from office.” In this sense, from a layperson’s standpoint, Chief Justice Corona’s impeachment was “a done thing” when the House of Representatives endorsed eight articles of impeachment against him by an overwhelming majority last December 12, and what we have been witnessing for over four months now in the Senate impeachment tribunal is the prosecution’s efforts to have him convicted for his alleged impeachable misconduct.

I would have left this matter with nary a comment except that last Wednesday, while my son Ed and I watched the impeachment trial on cable TV, one of the defense counsels, Dennis Manalo, made this statement while cross-examining a witness: “If the witness your honor is so declared as hostile, we will impeach this witness… by proving his bias and prejudice against Chief Justice Corona and his active involvement in a well-planned and orchestrated effort to destroy the reputation of Chief Justice Corona…”

At this juncture my son Ed turned to me and said: “Wait, Dad, didn’t the defense lawyer make a colossal word-choice blunder just now? He said he will impeach the witness, but how could that be? Has he forgotten that it’s his client—Chief Justice Corona—who has been impeached and is the one on trial in this case?”

“No, son,” I explained. “That defense lawyer’s choice of the verb ‘impeach’ is actually precise and calculated, except that he used the word in another sense—‘to cast doubt on or to challenge the credibility or validity of the testimony of a witness.’ That’s definition #2 of ‘impeach’ by our online Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary.”

“Well, shouldn’t he have used another word to avoid confusing laypeople like me? Perhaps ‘discredit’ would have been much clearer.”

“Yes, absolutely! But you see, ‘discredit’ isn’t a legal term; ‘impeach’ is the precise legal term for what lawyers would want to do to an adverse witness.”

This confusion over the dual meaning of “impeach” brings to mind this related comment posted in Jose Carillo’s English Forum recently by member Eduardo (Jay) Olaguer about an apparently imprecise legal usage: “I’m so tired of hearing Filipino newspapers refer to judges or lawmakers as ‘inhibiting’ themselves, meaning that they withdraw from participating in a decision due to a conflict of interest. Why don’t they use the word ‘recuse’ instead of ‘inhibit’? Those who recuse themselves are known as ‘recusants,’ like the English Catholics who withdrew from attending Anglican ‘masses’ during the English Reformation.”

I agreed with Ed that “recuse” is the more precise word for that particular act of self-disqualification by a judge owing to conflict of interest. Indeed, my Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate defines the transitive verb “recuse” as “to disqualify (oneself) as judge in a particular case” and, more broadly, “to remove (oneself) from participation to avoid a conflict of interest.” In contrast, it defines the verb “inhibit” in the general sense as “to prohibit from doing something” or “to hold in check.” And in English law, from what I can gather, “inhibition” is “the name of a writ which forbids a judge from further proceeding in a cause depending before him; it is in the nature of a prohibition.” In civil law, on the other hand, it is “the prohibition which the law makes, or a judge ordains to an individual.” The element of self-disqualification is absent in both definitions.

It’s abundantly clear, however, that even without the element of self-disqualification, the verb “inhibit” has gained more traction than “recuse” in Philippine legal language, so I guess we’ll just have to stick to our own home-grown sense of “inhibit.” (May 19, 2012)
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This essay earlier appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the May 19, 2012 issue of The Manila Times © 2012 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Fused sentences are telltale signs of a writer’s inability to link ideas

Most everybody who knows basic English grammar can construct a one-idea sentence correctly, like “The woman fainted,” but not a few would probably fumble adding to that very same sentence the fact that she won the lotto jackpot and that’s why she went into a state of shock. They may come up with a sentence like, say, “The woman fainted she went into a state of shock she won the lotto jackpot.”* This, of course, is what’s known as a fused or run-on sentence—the result of improperly linking or wrongly punctuating two or more clauses in the construction.

Fused sentences go beyond the nuts-and-bolts of English grammar. They are telltale signs that the writer hasn’t mastered the craft yet of connecting ideas in English, so it’s very disturbing to see them not so infrequently in professional writing like news stories and feature articles. Indeed, seeing one of them some time ago in the lead sentence of a government news release prompted me to write the grammar critique below in my English-usage column in The Manila Times in May of 2011. In the essay, re-titled here as “Grammatical options for giving sense to fused sentences,” I offer four ways of making the annoying wayward clauses of such sentences achieve a clear and satisfying functional linkage. (April 22, 2012)    

Grammatical options for fixing fused sentences

Of the many varieties of flawed English that I encounter when reading news and feature stories, I consider fused sentences the most serious and the most annoying. This is because I’m pretty sure that they aren’t just run-of-the-mill grammar errors arising from haste or oversight but a disturbing sign of an inadequate grasp of how the English language works.

As discussed in my book The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar Errors, a fused sentence is formed when two or more clauses are improperly linked or wrongly punctuated, resulting in a fractured, badly articulated, and confusing statement. Of course, in an essay written by a college freshman, a fused sentence every now and then may be forgivable, but in the lead sentence of a major education news story?

Consider the following lead sentence in a report of a leading Metro Manila newspaper last weekend about the country’s preschool education initiative:

Manila, Philippines—The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils expected to reach 2.5 million enrollees under its universal kindergarten program this coming school year. 
DepEd Assistant Secretary Tonicito Umali said each volunteer, who will work for three to four hours a day (,) will receive a monthly allowance of P3,000.

Like me when I was reading the lead sentence above, you must have stumbled in bafflement at midsentence. This verb phrase, “expected to reach 2.5 million enrollees under its universal kindergarten program this coming school year,” simply won’t connect to the preceding clause. The sentence suddenly got garbled and won’t make sense because the reporter—or perhaps the desk editor—had been so intent to cram into that sentence every bit of information in just one long uninterrupted burst of words (a tendency that, I regret to say, is very profound indeed among reporters and editors when constructing lead sentences for their news stories).

On inspection, we find that the problem with that sentence is that with neither rhyme nor reason, it fused the following two independent ideas:

1. “the Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils,” and

2. “enrolment is expected to reach 2.5 million under the DepEd’s universal kindergarten program this coming school year”

Note that these two ideas are actually independent clauses—grammar elements that, as most of us learned early in English grammar, need to link up properly and logically so they can work and make sense together. In this case, however, the fused construction was unable to do that basic sentence-combining task.

So how can that sentence achieve a functional linkage? Here are four grammatical options:

1. The relative cause option (using “who” as relative pronoun): “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach the 2.5 million pre-school pupils who are expected to enroll under its universal kindergarten program this coming school year.”

2. The coordinate conjunction option (using “as” as conjunction): “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils this coming school year as enrolment is expected to reach 2.5 million under its universal kindergarten program.”

3. The subordinate conjunction option (using “because” as subordinator”): “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach pre-school pupils this coming school year because enrolment is expected to reach 2.5 million under its universal kindergarten program.”

4. The total rewrite option: “The Department of Education (DepEd) will tap the services of about 22,000 volunteers to teach the 2.5 million pre-school pupils expected to enroll this coming school year under its universal kindergarten program.”

My personal preference is Option 4, for this total rewrite makes for a much simpler and more streamlined sentence—a far cry from the tangled original and decidedly more readable than the other three options above. (May 28, 2011)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, May 28, 2011 issue © 2011 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.
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*That fused sentence unfused: “The woman won the lotto jackpot, went into a state of shock, then fainted” or “When the woman won the lotto jackpot, she went into a state of shock and fainted” or “The woman went into a state of shock after winning the lotto jackpot, then fainted.” Any other possible way?

Monday, April 9, 2012

Dealing with the vexing inverted syntax of passive-voice sentences

We all know the difference between active-voice and passive-voice sentences, with most discussions about them revolving around the idea that as a norm in writing, the active voice should be preferred over the passive voice. This is because, the subject-verb relationship and the sentence structure in an active-voice sentence are decidedly simpler and and more straightforward than those in the passive voice sentence, as we can see in the following comparative constructions:

Active voice: “We pushed through with our plan despite the insurmountable difficulties.”
Passive voice: “Our plan was pushed through by us despite the insurmountable difficulties.”

We can see that the syntax of the passive-voice construction tends to become convoluted when it is forced to supply all of the equivalent grammatical elements of its active-voice counterpart; in particular, the phrase “by us” in the passive-voice sentence above sticks out like a sore thumb and makes the statement sound icky. Indeed, the grammar and structure of passive-voice sentences differ in remarkable ways from that of active-voice sentences, as I explain in the essay below that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in April of 2011 in reply to a member of Jose Carillo's English Forum who expressed bafflement over those grammatical differences. (April 8, 2012)

How the grammar of active-voice and passive-voice sentences differs

A Forum member, Nathan_Yell, asked the following very interesting grammar questions:

“What is the function of the prepositional phrase in the passive voice? Most grammar guides say that the object in the active voice becomes the subject in passive. Is the reverse true? Does the subject become the object in the passive? In the sentence ‘The rice is harvested by the farmers,’ isn’t the phrase ‘by the farmers’ a modifier of the verb ‘harvested’ and thus, an adverb phrase rather than an object? Or, is the term ‘object’ generally used to refer to anything that completes, complements or modifies the verb?”

Here are my answers to Nathan_Yell’s questions:

The function of the prepositional phrase at the tail end of a passive-voice sentence is to identity the doer of the action of the operative verb, as in the sentence you presented, “The rice is harvested by the farmers.” As we know, such prepositional phrases are an optional element in the passive-voice sentence, which actually can stand without them: “The rice is harvested.”

Now, does the subject of a sentence in the active voice become the object when the sentence is rendered in the passive voice? Before I answer that question, let’s first clarify what the active voice and the passive voice are in the first place.

By definition, a sentence is in the active voice when its grammatical subject performs the action of the operative verb, as in this form of the sentence you presented: “The farmers harvest the rice.” Here, the noun “farmers” is the grammatical subject, “harvested” is the operative verb in the active-voice form, and the noun “rice” is the direct object of that verb.

On the other hand, a sentence is in the passive voice when its grammatical subject receives the action of the operative verb, as in the original form of that sentence you presented: “The rice is harvested by the farmers.” Here, the noun “rice” is the grammatical subject, “is harvested” is the operative verb phrase in the passive-voice form, and the noun “farmers” is the doer of the action.

We can clearly see here that the grammatical subject of the active-voice sentence, “farmers,” is not the direct object in the passive-voice sentence. Instead, by becoming part of the prepositional phrase “by the farmers,” that noun has become what’s known as the object of the preposition. The object of the preposition, as I pointed out earlier, is optional to the passive-voice sentence. That sentence can therefore stand without it: “The rice is harvested.”

My answer to your second question is therefore a categorical “no.” The subject of a sentence in the active voice doesn’t become the direct or indirect object when the sentence is rendered in the passive voice. It becomes a different grammatical element known as the object of the preposition—just a noun or a pronoun that follows a preposition to complete its meaning, as in this passive-voice form of the sentence you presented: “The rice is harvested by the farmers.”

As to your third question on whether the phrase “by the farmers” is not an object but an adverb phrase that modifies the verb “harvested,” the answer is “yes.” It is functionally an adverb phrase that modifies the verb “harvested,” but grammatically, “the farmer” is also the object of the preposition “by” in that sentence.

Now to your last question: Does the term “object” generally refer to anything that completes, complements, or modifies the verb? No, definitely not; the term “object” refers to anything that receives the action of the verb, whether as direct object or indirect object. Anything that completes, complements, or modifies the predicate—not the verb—is a complement, which by definition is any added word or expression by which a predication is made complete, like the adjective “impertinent” in the sentence “The judge found the lawyer’s question impertinent” and the phrase “as her traveling companion” in “She chose him as her traveling companion.” (April 30, 2011)

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 30, 2011 issue © 2011 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Conclusion: Achieving greater mastery of paragraphing

This week’s edition of the Forum continues “Making Effective Paragraph Transitions,” the four-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in early 2006. The essay discusses the various techniques that a writer can use to effectively bridge a paragraph to the one preceding it—a process that works in much the same way as logically bridging adjoining sentences in an exposition.

Part I, which I posted in the previous Forum edition together with Part II, took up the most basic forms of paragraph transitions, namely (1) to simply repeat in the first sentence of a paragraph the same operative word used in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph, and (2) to use in the first sentence of a new paragraph a synonym or words similar to a chosen operative word in the last sentence of a preceding paragraph. Also taken up in the essay were the various task-oriented paragraph transitions.

Part II then took up the basic extrinsic or implicit transitional devices that use the pronouns “this,” “that,” “these,” “those,” and “it” in the first sentence of a succeeding paragraph to link it to the preceding paragraph.

This time, Part III takes up the use of the words “it,” “such,” and “there” as well as of prepositional phrases for making paragraph transitions, while Part IV discusses the most sophisticated form of paragraph transitions—the so-called  “deep-hook” paragraph transitions, which subtly work out their bridging logic by making themselves an intrinsic part of the idea being developed. (April 1, 2012)

Part III – Making effective 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:
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:
            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:
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. (January 23, 2006)

Part IV – Making effective 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 “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...


1.5

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 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 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:
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 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. (January 30, 2006)

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