Writing well in English no guarantee of speaking well in English

Over the past nine years that I’ve been pursuing my good-English advocacy, initially through my English-usage column in The Manila Times and now also through my English-usage books and this website, I have received hundreds of e-mail from people commenting on my views or asking for personal advice on how they might be able to improve their English. In terms of English grammar and usage, I’ve always been confident that my advice and prescriptions could demonstrably help learners improve their written English as well as their thinking process. I didn’t have the same level of confidence though in being able to help people speak well in English. Being totally print-based, I just felt that I didn’t have the wherewithal to give useful instruction on such aspects of speech as pronunciation, enunciation, voice projection, and body language. This was why in practically every case, I would suggest to those asking me for advice on improving their spoken English to seek more competent instruction elsewhere.

Looking back now, I couldn’t help but wonder how those who sought advice from me fared after getting nothing from me beyond such general suggestions as developing the ability to think logically, learning from good English speakers as role models, and relentlessly doing practice, practice, practice. With a tinge of guilt, I am particularly keen in knowing what happened to the pseudonymous Euclid Paraiso, about whose desire to be a call-center agent I wrote the essay below—rather harshly and dismissively, I regret to say—in my English-usage column in the Times way back in 2006. (July 17, 2011)

The need to speak well in English

A few days ago, I received this e-mail from a reader of my English-usage column in The Manila Times:

Dear Mr. Carillo,
 Please give me some pointers on (1) how to improve my capability to speak fluent English, (2) how to speak with confidence before an audience, and (3) how to speak without gaps in my speech. I’m making this request, sir, because I plan to apply to a call center and I want to prepare myself before I send my application. 

         Euclid Paraiso*

Here’s my open reply to the letter:

Dear Euclid,

To speak fluent and convincing English, you need at least four major attributes: a good grasp of English (and by this I mean its vocabulary, grammar, semantics, and structure), logical and clear thinking, good pronunciation, and confidence and empathy with your audience.

It takes years to develop all of these attributes, and those still sorely deficient in most of them by the time they finish college don’t stand a chance at all of landing an English-language call center job. A clear, demonstrable command of spoken English is a must for this job, so all things being equal, applicants who don’t meet this criterion can’t hope to compete with the thousands who have already cultivated their spoken English to a high level. They may possess the intelligence and native charm to impress people in their regional tongue, but if their spoken English is way below par, it would be much better for them to pursue occupations that don’t give too much premium to good spoken English.

It’s true that through my English-usage column, I aim to help people improve their written English, but I would like to emphasize that there’s a whole world of difference between being able to write good English and being able to speak like a good native English speaker. Writing and speaking are two different disciplines, and I’m afraid I can only teach the former. Good writers aren’t necessarily good speakers, and good speakers aren’t necessarily good writers. In fact, it’s an open secret that there are many excellent English-language writers and editors who speak dreadful English, as there are many excellent English-language lecturers, public officials, and TV talk-show hosts who can hardly write a coherent English paragraph, much less a cohesive English exposition.   

As to logical thinking and clarity of thought, Euclid, I fear that these are such in short supply these days. People allow too much politics, ideology, religious fanaticism, and superstition to bend and twist their thinking into such ludicrous shapes. Scores of people getting crushed to death in a TV show stampede? Blame the current national leadership for the grinding poverty that had desperately made those people want to get rich quick by participating in that TV show. A huge chunk of a denuded moun­tainside collapsing to bury a whole village and most of its population? Blame the current national leadership, the rain, or the people themselves for perhaps forgetting to pray the night before for the absolution of their sins. I just hope that you aren’t one of the legions of our people who have been rendered largely incapable of rational thinking by their social milieu, because if you are, Euclid, even impeccable English won’t land you a job in a call center or in any other job that needs clear, straight thinking to produce the desired results.

Good English pronunciation is, of course, something you learn from good English speakers as role models and from years of practice, practice, practice. Only these can eliminate the flaws and gaps in your articulation and build your confidence when addressing an audience. But frankly, Euclid, if you still have serious doubts about your pronunciation up to now, forget that call center job. By dint of hard work you may ultimately achieve passable English diction, but by then your regional accent would have already clung to your tongue and vocal chords so tenaciously that there’d be no hope for you to sound like a native English speaker ever. (February 27, 2006)

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*Euclid Paraiso is a pseudonym of the letter writer, who at the time of the writing of this letter lived in San Pedro, Laguna.

From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 27, 2006 © 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The two ways of paraphrasing quoted statements in reportage

Last week, I posted here a three-part essay, “How to handle reported speech,” that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2009. I discussed in that essay how the operative verb in a reported statement must be rendered to grammatically match the tense of the reporting verb, and what grammatical changes must be made in the reported statement itself to conform to the sense of reported speech.

This time I am posting a two-part companion essay, “Dealing with quotations and attributions,” which I wrote in 2005 to explain how today’s news service agencies as well as newspapers and magazines present paraphrased quoted statements. As we all know, paraphrasing routinely does away with the quotation marks that set off a quoted statement from its attribution, but this question arises: Which tense should control the time framework of the whole sentence—that of the attribution, or that of the quoted paraphrased material?

The prevailing practice in media is to use the sequence of tenses rule, in which the tense in the paraphrased statement is retained when the attribution comes after or within that statement; when the attribution comes ahead of the paraphrased quoted statement, however, the tense of the attribution gains control over the tenses in the rest of the statement. In contrast, some media organizations use the so-called exceptional sequence rule, which generally retains the tense used in the speaker’s exact words no matter where the attribution falls in the paraphrased quoted material.

The two-part essay that follows discusses precisely how these two ways of dealing with paraphrased statements are done. (July 9, 2011)

  

Dealing with quotations and attributions

Part I:

A reader from India, Jhumur D., has raised a very interesting question by e-mail about the proper use of the tenses in indirectly quoted or paraphrased statements:

“I came across your articles through Google and since then have been its regular reader. We all know that the past tense should be used for indirect narration if the verb [in the attribution] is in the past tense, except for universally true facts. But these days I regularly see the opposite. Can you please explain why this sentence from a reputable news agency doesn’t follow the grammar rule?

State-run Indian Oil Corp. (IOC) is in preliminary talks to acquire Canada’s Niko Resources and French energy firm Maurel and Prom, a spokesman for the Indian refiner said on Friday.

“It should have been ‘was in preliminary talks.’”

Offhand, my answer is that the news agency is correct in using the present tense in the sentence in question. To understand why this is so, however, we first have to review the basics of how written English normally handles quotations and attributions.

We all know that when the exact words of a speaker are quoted, those words should be duly set off by quotation marks. The attribution is then provided either before or after the statement, but depending on the writer’s judgment, it may also be placed within the quoted statement whenever appropriate:

The manager said, “Our president has decided and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind.”
 “Our president has decided and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind,” the manager said. “Our president has decided,” the manager said, “and he’s someone who rarely changes his mind.”

No matter where the attribution is placed in such quoted statements, the statement retains the exact words and the tense of the verbs used by the speaker. We are not at liberty to change anything in what was actually said.

The quoted material presented by Jhumur is something different, however. It has been paraphrased; in other words, it doesn’t use the speaker’s exact words. In print journalism, this practice is indicated by doing away with the quotation marks that normally set off quoted material from its attribution.

Now, when quotation marks are dropped in this manner, there could be confusion as to which tense should control the time framework of the whole sentence—that of the attribution, or that of the quoted paraphrased material. This is why when using paraphrased quoted statements, many news service agencies as well as newspapers and magazines follow the so-called sequence of tenses rule.

Under this rule, when the attribution comes after or within that statement, the tenses in the quoted statement are retained. This is why the quoted paraphrased statement presented by Jhumur uses the present-tense “is in preliminary talks” instead of the past-tense “was in preliminary talks.” On the other hand, when the attribution comes ahead of the paraphrased quoted statement, the tense of the attribution acquires control over the tenses in the rest of the statement.

The tenses used in the original verbatim statement will then change as follows:

(1) The present tense becomes past tense (“is”/”are” to “was”/”were”). For instance, if a beauty contest winner tells the news reporter these exact words, “I am overwhelmed,” the reporter would write it as follows: She said [that] she was overwhelmed.

(2) The future tense becomes conditional (“will” to “would”). For instance, if an irate beauty contest loser tells the reporter these exact words, “I will appeal the judges’ decision,” the reporter would write it as follows: She said [that] she would appeal the judges’ decision.

(3) The past tense becomes past perfect (“was”/”were” to “had been”), except when the time element is indicated. For instance, if a beauty contest chair tells the newspaper reporter these exact words, “We were scandalized by the loser’s complaint,” the reporter would write it as follows: She said [that] they had been scandalized by the loser’s complaint. However, the past tense is retained when the time element of the action in the quoted material is given: She said [that] they were scandalized when the loser filed a complaint yesterday.

(4) The future perfect becomes conditional (“will have + past participle” to “would have + past participle”). For instance, if the beauty contest chair tells the newspaper reporter these exact words, “I will have to review the scores first before deciding,” the reporter would write it as follows: She said she would have to evaluate the scores first before deciding.

Some publications don’t follow this rule, however. Instead, they use the so-called “exceptional sequence rule,” which generally retains the tense used in the original quotation no matter where the attribution is placed in the quoted paraphrased material.

We will discuss this other rule in detail in the next column. (December 20, 2005)

Part II:

We saw in the preceding essay that when quoted statements are paraphrased or don’t use the speaker’s exact words, the convention in written English is to drop the quotation marks that set off the quoted material from its attribution, after which the traditional “sequence of tenses” rule determines the tense of the verbs in the paraphrased quoted material.

This rule is easy to apply when the attribution comes after or within the paraphrased quoted statement. For instance, if a political analyst tells a newspaper reporter these exact words, “Some senators are vehemently against changing the Constitution and I think they’ll fight tooth and nail to defeat the proposed amendments,” the reporter might make a quoted paraphrase in either of two ways:

(1) Some senators are strongly opposed to charter change and will fight the proposed amendments in every possible way, the political analyst said.
 (2) Some senators are strongly opposed to charter change, the political analyst said, and they will fight the proposed amendments in every possible way. The tenses in the speaker’s exact words are retained.

When the attribution comes ahead of the paraphrased quoted statement, however, the tense of the attribution gains control over the tenses in the paraphrase, and the sequence of tenses rule is then applied as follows: present tense becomes past tense, future tense becomes conditional, past tense becomes past perfect, present perfect becomes past perfect, and future perfect becomes future conditional.

Thus, in the earlier example, the quoted paraphrase will change the tenses in the verbatim quotation this way:

The political analyst said [that] several senators were strongly opposed to charter change and would fight it in every possible way.

As previously pointed out, many news service agencies, newspapers, and magazines use the sequence of tenses rule for paraphrased quoted statements, but others consider this rule confusing and misleading. They prefer to use the “exceptional sequence” rule, which generally retains the tense used in the speaker’s exact words no matter where the attribution falls in the paraphrased quoted material. The example given earlier will thus be rendered in this paraphrased quoted form: The political analyst said [that] several senators are strongly opposed to charter change and will fight it in every possible way.

Proponents of the exceptional sequence rule argue that paraphrased quoted statements formed by using it are clearer and more logical and immediate than those formed by using the traditional sequence of tenses rule. True enough, by not having to change the tenses in paraphrased quoted statements, the exceptional sequence rule eliminates a procedure that can sometimes confuse even the writers themselves and possibly mislead the reader.

We can better appreciate the relative virtues of the two rules by applying each to a statement about a situation that doesn’t change so quickly. Assume, for instance, that a provincial governor told a reporter these exact words yesterday: “I have a green card but I don’t intend to live in the U.S. upon my retirement.” A quoted paraphrase of this verbatim statement using the traditional sequence of tenses rule will change its tense from present to past:

The provincial governor said [that] he had a green card but didn’t intend to live in the U.S. upon retiring.

 In contrast, a quoted paraphrase using the exceptional sequence rule will retain the present tense:

The provincial governor said [that] he has a green card but doesn’t intend to live in the U.S. upon retiring. Both versions are grammatically correct, and present no logical problems with their differing use of the tenses.

We must be aware, though, that even under the exceptional sequence rule, some situations arise in which changing the tense of the verbatim quoted material becomes absolutely necessary. For instance, assume that a city mayor told a reporter of a daily newspaper these exact words yesterday: “I am not feeling well so I will not attend the party caucus tonight.”

In a news report for today’s papers, the following paraphrased quoted statement using the exceptional sequence rule will no longer hold logically:

The city mayor said [that] he is not feeling well and will not attend the party caucus last night.

This is because by the time the report is read, the city mayor might have already gotten well and might have even attended the party caucus eventually. Thus, there’s no choice but to use the past tense, as in the case of the sequence of tenses rule:

The city mayor said [that] he was not feeling well and would not attend the party caucus scheduled last night.

Indeed, no matter what rule we use in writing paraphrased quoted statements, we must reflect in a logical way the effect of the passage of time between the utterance of the quoted statement and its being read in the printed form. (December 26, 2005)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, December 20 and 26, 2005 © 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Reported speech needs advanced grammar skills and a quick mind

From a grammar standpoint, writing about the things we have said ourselves is much simpler than reporting to people what we heard or learned somebody else has said. This latter activity is what’s known in English grammar as reported speech or indirect speech, and it requires higher grammar skills and quickness of mind to do properly. As I’m sure many of us have already found out, putting the reported clause—the statement uttered by the person we are talking about—in the proper tense and form isn’t all that simple. Unless we are among the very few people on Earth gifted with total recall, we won’t be able to quote those utterances word for word. We will often need to paraphrase those utterances and apply what’s known as the normal sequence-of-tenses rule for reported speech—a rule that needs thorough mastery before it can be applied with confidence and finesse.

In “How to handle reported speech,” a three-part essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2009, I discuss how the operative verb in the reported statement must be rendered to grammatically match the tense of the reporting verb, and what grammatical changes must be made in the reported statement to conform to the sense of reported speech. I am posting all three essays here for those who need a full-dress review of reported speech to further improve their English. (July 3, 2011)

How to handle reported speech

Part I:

Handling directly quoted statements is quite simple, but it can sometimes go wrong when we mix up the Ame­rican English and British English styles for using quotation marks and for punctuating quoted statements within quoted statements. It gets just a bit more complicated when we report what someone else has said but don’t use the exact words. We do this, of course, when we can’t remember the exact words or when we just want to summarize, focus on the salient points, or perhaps improve the grammar of what was said. We then enter the realm of what is called in English grammar as reported speech or indirect speech.

The pivotal factor in reported speech is the tense of the reporting verb. When the reporting verb is in the simple present tense, present perfect tense, or future tense, the operative verb in the reported statement remains unchanged; often, only the pronouns in the quoted statement need to be changed.

Consider the following directly quoted statement by American baker Kent Dueitt in an interview with The New York Times: “We keep the dough cooled, to prevent the baking powder from activating, and we don’t beat the dough up. We mix slow.”

In the simple present tense, that statement can be rendered in reported speech as follows:

American baker Kent Dueitt says that they keep the dough cooled to prevent the baking powder from activating and that they don’t beat the dough but mix it slow.

In the present perfect tense:

American baker Kent Dueitt has said that they keep the dough cooled to prevent the baking powder from activating and that they don’t beat the dough but mix it slow.

And in the future tense:

American baker Kent Dueitt will say that they keep the dough cooled to prevent the baking powder from activating and that they don’t beat the dough but mix it slow.

     

In all three of the reporting tenses above, the only grammatically significant change in the reported statement is the replacement of the pronoun “we” with “they.” Of course, the conjunction “that” is used to introduce the indirectly quoted statement, since it takes the form of a noun clause. In informal writing, however, the conjunction “that” can often be dropped to make the reported speech easier to articulate, as we can see in the following “that”-less construction of the simple present tense rendition:

American baker Kent Dueitt says they keep the dough cooled to prevent the baking powder from activating, and don’t beat the dough but mix it slow.

But things in reported speech become more iffy when the reporting verb is in the past tense. The general rule, as we all know, is for the operative verb in the reported statement to move one tense back, but that rule applies only when the action in the reported statement is a completed or consummated one.

Take this direct quote from a Philippine official about the Somalia ship-piracy issue as reported in The Manila Times: “At the moment, we have not gotten any feedback as to the advisability of issuing an official ban for Filipino seamen going there [Somalia].”

Quite simply, that direct quote can be rendered in reported speech this way:

The Philippine official said that they had not gotten any feedback at the moment as to the advisability of issuing an official ban for Filipino seamen going to Somalia.

When the action is a repeated or habitual one, however, as in the case of the baker’s statement quoted in The New York Times, the operative verb in the reported statement formally should take the modal form “would + verb”:

American baker Kent Dueitt said [that] they would keep the dough cooled to prevent the baking powder from activating and [that they] would not beat the dough but mix it slow. (April 18, 2009)

Part II:

In the previous essay, I observed that while the general rule in reported speech is to move the operative verb in the directly quoted statement one tense back, things are not as predictable when the action in the reported statement is a repeated or habitual one, as in this directly quoted statement by an American baker: “We keep the dough cooled, to prevent the baking powder from activating, and we don’t beat the dough up. We mix slow.” I said that in reported speech, the operative verbs in that reported statement formally take not the simple past tense but the modal form “would + verb”:

American baker Kent Dueitt said [that] they would keep the dough cooled to prevent the baking powder from activating and [that they] would not beat the dough but mix it slow.

The formal use of the modal form “would + verb” for this particular situation is meant to indicate that while the actions described—keeping the dough cooled and not beating it—were being repeatedly or habitually done by the bakers up to the point of Mr. Dueitt’s utterance, it’s possible that they might have stopped doing those actions thereafter. In other words, the use of the modal form recognizes that there’s a zone of uncertainty as to whether the repeated or habitual actions described had continued or persisted up to the time the statement was reported. Of course, without that uncertainty—if we are definitely sure that the bakers continue to do those actions up to now—we can very well use the simple present tense for the operative verbs in the reported speech, as follows:

American baker Kent Dueitt said [that] they keep the dough cooled to prevent the baking powder from activating and [that they] don’t beat the dough but mix it slow.

Now, as I had discussed in an earlier essay, when the reporting verb is in the simple past tense, the operative verb in a directly quoted statement—in whatever tense it might be—generally moves one tense backwards in reported speech.

From past progressive in a directly quoted statement:

We were cooling the dough when the baking powder activated it.

To past perfect progressive in reported speech (taking into account that Mr. Dueitt is male): He said they had been cooling the dough when the baking powder activated it.

From present progressive:

We are finding it difficult to cool the dough.

To past progressive:

He said they were finding it difficult to cool the dough.

From simple present perfect:

We have cooled the dough enough but the baking powder activated it.

To simple past perfect:

He said they had cooled the dough enough but the baking powder activated it.

From present perfect progressive:

We have been cooling the dough but the baking powder still activated it.

To past perfect progressive:

He said they had been cooling the dough but the baking power still activated it.

Keep in mind, though, that when the operative verb of the reported utterance is in the past perfect or past perfect progressive tense, no change is possible for it in reported speech; it stays in that tense.

Utterance in the past perfect:

The dough had cooled by the time we remembered to beat it.

In reported speech:

He said the dough had cooled by the time they remembered to beat it.

Utterance in the past perfect progressive:

We had been cooling that dough without beating it as a matter of procedure.

In reported speech:

He said they had been cooling that dough without beating it as a matter of procedure.

We will conclude this discussion in the next essay. (April 25, 2009)

Part III:

We are now almost done with our review of how directly quoted statements behave when transformed into reported speech, particularly in the way their operative verbs move one tense back in the paraphrased statement. All we need to do now is to tie up a few loose ends to make sure that the transformations we make are grammatically correct every time.

In making the transformations, we also need to always change the time signifiers in the directly quoted statement to conform to the sense of reported speech. These time signifiers, whenever present in the direct quote, must be back-shifted one step in time along with the back-shifting of the operative verb. If we forget to do this, our sentences would be askew both grammatically and logically.

These time signifiers or adverbs of time and their conversion to the form needed in reported speech should now be second nature to us, as we can see in the list below of the most common time-signifier conversions:

From “now” to “then”:

Direct quote: “The public should start taking precautions against the swine flu virus right now,” the health official said last week.

Reported speech: The health official said last week that the public should start taking precautions against the swine flu virus right then.

From “today” to “that day”

Direct quote: “I am giving you only until today to settle your account,” she said.

Reported speech: She said she was giving me only until that day to settle my account.

From “tomorrow” to “the following day”

Direct quote: “See me tomorrow to discuss your monthly sales,” my manager said.

Reported speech: My manager asked me to see him the following day to discuss my monthly sales.

From “yesterday” to “the previous day” or “the day before”

Direct quote: “Please tell me what you were doing at the park yesterday,” the irate wife asked her husband.

Reported speech: The irate wife asked her husband what he was doing at the park the previous day [or the day before].

From “last year” to “the year before”

Direct quote: “We met last year during a heavy downpour,” the bride told us.

Reported speech: The bride told us that they met the year before during a heavy downpour.”

Apart from the time signifiers, we also need to routinely change the place signifiers “here” and “this” in directly quoted statements to conform to the sense of reported speech, as follows:

From “here” to “there”

Direct quote: “I saw you here with another woman this morning,” his fiancée said at the restaurant.

Reported speech: His fiancée said at the restaurant [that] she saw him there with another woman that morning.”

From “this” to “that”

Direct quote: “I warned you about this matter several times,” his supervisor said.

Reported speech: His supervisor said [that] he had warned him about that matter several times.

Finally, when the operative verb in a directly quoted statement is in the modal form, we need to remember to always change the modal auxiliary to its past tense form in reported speech.

From “will” to “would”

Direct quote: “The staff will leave only upon my instructions,” the general manager said.

Reported speech: The general manager said [that] the staff would leave only upon his instructions.

From “can” to “could”

Direct quote: “Alicia can finish her report in three days,” the supervisor said.

Reported speech: The supervisor said [that] Alicia could finish her report in three days.”

From “must” to “had to”

Direct quote: “All projects must be finished by yearend,” the president said.

Reported speech: The president said [that] all projects had to be finished by yearend.

From “may” to “might”

Direct quote: “I may go to New York next month,” my friend said.

Reported speech: My friend said he might go to New York next month.

We are done with our review of reported speech. (May 2, 2009)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 18 and 25 and May 2, 2008 © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

RELATED ESSAYS:

“The proper way to construct sentences for reported speech”

“Going back to the basic forms of reported speech”

How to prevent monumental grammar errors from ruining our English

Some professional writers get so good at their craft that they become complacent with their English grammar and usage. Having navigated the grammar terrain so well and for so long, they begin to overrely on their writerly instinct instead of becoming coldly critical of their written work. Soon they become blind to the individual trees in the forest of their prose, so to speak. As a result, they sometimes come up with monumental grammar bloopers that, when missed out by less-than-eagle-eyed editors before publication, would mark them as far from the English-savvy writers they thought they were.

In the essay below that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2008, retitled here as “Dissecting two grammar curiosities and crudities,” I zero in on two such monumental grammar bloopers, then give a prescription for preventing them from ruining our written English and our hard-earned reputation as professional writers. (June 26, 2011)

Dissecting two grammar curiosities and crudities

To heighten our English-grammar awareness, let’s dissect two grammar curiosities and crudities that I came across in my newspaper readings:

From a foreign news service story: “News photos showed the derailed train laying at the bottom of a ditch, with rescuers removing passengers from a carriage that had fallen onto its side.”

From a newspaper columnist’s essay: “As a young short story fellow at the UP National Writers Workshop in Baguio a decade ago, the workshop banner carried our batch’s official theme: Who do you write for?”

Found what’s wrong with the grammar of the sentences above?

The more grammar-savvy among you must have easily figured out what’s wrong with the first sentence. It misuses the progressive form of the transitive verb “lay,” which means “to put or set something down.” The correct verb to use here is the progressive form of the intransitive “lie,” which means “to stay at rest horizontally,” as shown in the corrected sentence below:

“News photos showed the derailed train lying at the bottom of a ditch, with rescuers removing passengers from a carriage that had fallen onto its side.”

But before moving on to the next sentence, let’s ponder this very interesting question: Why are people so prone to mixing up “lay” and “lie”?

Well, to begin with, they are look-alikes, sound-alikes, and mean-alikes. Even worse, they sometimes inflect into a bewildering form in certain tenses; oddly, for instance, the past-tense form of the intransitive “lie” takes exactly the same form as that of the present-tense plural of the transitive “lay”—“lay” in both cases. It’s really no wonder why even seasoned writers and editors often bungle their use.

If you think I’m overstating the case about how notoriously misused this verb-pair is, look at this recent reportage by a foreign news service on the earthquake devastation in China: “An hour after the quake, a half-dozen patients in blue-striped pajamas stood outside the hospital. One was laying on a hospital bed in the parking lot” (italicization mine). The correct verb form here is, of course, “lying,” the progressive form of the intransitive verb “lie.”

In the case of the second problematic sentence, here’s the big problem: Its message has been inadvertently mangled by a terribly misplaced modifier. Because of improper positioning, the prepositional phrase “as a young short story fellow at the UP National Writers Workshop in Baguio a decade ago” absurdly modifies the wrong subject, “the workshop banner.” Its proper and logical subject is, of course, the “young short-story fellow” or the author herself.

This is a very serious grammatical problem and I’m quite sure that you didn’t find it so easy to fix. Indeed, it took me quite an effort to break that bad interlock between the modifying phrase and its wrong subject. Finally, however, I came up with these three major overhauls that nicely gets rid of that misplaced modifying phrase:

 (1) “I recall that when I attended the UP National Writers Workshop in Baguio City as a short-story fellow a decade ago, the workshop banner for our batch carried this official theme: ‘Who do you write for?’”

(2) “A decade ago, when I attended the UP National Writers Workshop in Baguio City as a short-story fellow, the workshop banner for our batch carried this official theme: ‘Who do you write for?’”

(3) “A decade ago, I attended the UP National Writers Workshop in Baguio City as a short-story fellow and I recall that the workshop banner carried this official theme for our batch: “Who do you write for?”

Our best defense against misplaced modifiers is nothing less than eternal vigilance over our language, not just over form or grammar. We must always check for logic. If what we’re saying looks grammatically correct but somehow doesn’t make sense, it’s a telltale sign of a misplaced modifier somewhere. We need to hunt it down to prevent it from doing mischief on our prose. (May 24, 2008)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, May 24, 2008 © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Ineffectual phrases, repeater phrases, and other enemies of good writing

They may look so irresistibly apt and handy at first blush, but beware, many stock phrases in English can do more harm than good to your writing! I am referring to those common expressions that, rather than give finesse to your English, can make it sound fluffy, pretentious, or irritatingly redundant. They are (1) the so-called ineffectual phrases, (2) the many wordy phrases formed by habitual nominalization, (3) the repeater phrases, and (4) those mind-numbing verbose expressions that often infest journalistic reporting.

In “A sorry trail of wasted words,” a four-part series of essays that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2005, I discussed how these undesirable stock phrases can make English expositions an unpleasant reading or listening experience. I am posting the fourth essay here to give you a better idea why we need to banish these stock phrases from our written and spoken English. (June 18, 2011)     

A sorry trail of wasted words

Some stock phrases in English are inherently undesirable because they are too wordy and only tend to give a false depth and emphasis to what is being said. These expressions, which are called ineffectual phrases, don’t really add value to speech or writing; worse, they make their users sound fluffy or pretentious without meaning to. The best policy is therefore to avoid these phrases altogether and to routinely use their more concise equivalents.

Here are some of the most common of these ineffectual phrases, along with the more concise words for them: “as a matter of fact” (“actually”), “for the purpose of” (“for”), “in the near future” (“soon”), “in the event that” (“if”), “in the eventuality that” (“if”), “with the exception of” (“except”), “in conjunction with” (“and”), “due to the fact that” (“because”), “by virtue of the fact that” (“because”), “on account of the fact that” (“because”), “owing to the fact that” (“because”), “in view of the fact that” (“since,” “because”), “in the absence of” (“without”), “is (was) of the opinion that” (“thinks that,” “thought that”), “as regards” (“about”), “with regard to” (“about”), “with respect to” (“about”), “it is interesting to note that” (just drop it), “needless to say” (just drop it), and “when all is said and done” (just drop it).

Another pitfall we must guard against is getting into the habit of converting verbs into wordy phrases built around a nominalization, in the mistaken belief that this makes a statement look or sound more important and impressive. On the contrary, many phrases built around nominalizations not only make sentences longer and annoyingly obtuse but also obscure the idea being presented.

Here are some common wordy phrases that result from habitual nominalization, along with their simple verb equivalents: “take action on” (“act”), “give consideration to” (“consider”), “engage in the preparation of” (“prepare”), “conduct a discussion” (“discuss”), “make an assumption that” (“assume that”), “make a discovery of” (“discover”), “do (perform) an analysis of” (“analyze”), “result in a reduction” (“reduce”), and “reach a conclusion about” (“conclude”). When “–ion” words like these begin to mushroom in our writing or speech, it’s time to identify all of the needless nominalizations among them and make them revert to their active verb forms. In well-written prose, only a few truly useful nominalizations normally survive this denominalization process.

Wordiness also often results from habitual use of what are called repeater phrases. These are words commonly used together yet actually mean the same thing, forming tautologies. Of course, the problem can be remedied by simply dropping the extraneous words in the repeater phrase, but we need to cultivate a strong sensitivity to the repetition that often hides so well in such phrases.

Here are some common repeater phrases and their concise equivalents: “close proximity” (“close”), “new innovation” (“innovation”), “added bonus” (“bonus”), “exactly the same” (“the same”), “prior experience” (“experience”), “revert back” (“revert”), “minute detail” (“detail”), “close scrutiny” (“scrutiny”), “combine together” (“combine”), “surrounded on all sides” (“surrounded”), “free gift” (“gift”), “temporary reprieve” (“reprieve”), “exact replica” (“replica”), and “future plans” (“plans”).

Finally, we would all be spared from so much aggravation as readers and listeners if newspapers and the broadcast media only took a much more serious effort to rid their news and feature reportage of such numbing journalese as these: “placed under arrest” (“arrested”), “made good their escape” (“escaped”), “escaped injury” (“was not injured”), “kicked off the campaign” (“began the campaign”), “hammered out—or, worse, “forged”—an agreement” (“agreed”), “put in an appearance” (“appeared”), “razed to the ground” (“razed”), “last-ditch attempt” (“final attempt”), and “left in its wake a wide swath of destruction” (“caused so much destruction”). (November 7, 2005)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, November 7, 2005 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

When words get boxed in for highly specialized usage

Some English words get stigmatized through consensual misuse. They fall into disfavor because an altogether different denotation sticks to them, and rarely can they return to respectable usage after that. In the Philippines, in particular, one such word is the transitive verb “salvage.” It formally means “to rescue or save especially from wreckage or ruin,” of course, but in recent years, it has come to colloquial use in the exact opposite sense of “to kill or exterminate with impunity.” Considering how local media had seized on that meaning to dramatize their stories of organized murder and mayhem, I strongly doubt if “salvage” could still shed this unsavory denotation.

Then there are also English words that somehow get boxed in for specialized use. Among them is the noun “celebrant,” which has been appropriated in predominantly Christian or Roman Catholic countries to exclusively mean “a priest officiating the Holy Mass.” Woe to those who would dare to use “celebrant” to mean just anyone celebrating a birthday or some other personal  milestone! They would often be heckled as deficient in their English, then pointedly told that the correct word for that mere earthly observance is “celebrator.”

In “No need to hold ‘celebrant’ in a straightjacket,” an essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in the middle of last year, I argued that there’s really no legitimate and compelling reason why the word “celebrant” should be used solely as a religious term. This week, I am posting that essay in the Forum to see if there are enough people who will agree with me that “celebrant” ought to be democratized to allow for its use in secular contexts. (June 12, 2011)

No need to hold “celebrant” in a straightjacket

The Philippines being predominantly Roman Catholic, there’s a tendency for the supposedly English-savvy among us to scoff at people who describe as a “celebrant” someone celebrating a birthday or some other auspicious occasion. “Oh, no, that isn’t right!” they would often cut off and gleefully heckle the speaker. “The right word is ‘celebrator’; ‘celebrant’ means a priest officiating the Holy Mass!”

But are people who use “celebrator” in that context really wrong? Do they really deserve all that heckling?

Although I don’t usually join the wicked ribbing that often follows, I myself used to think that people who call birthday celebrators “birthday celebrants” are—if not actually unsavvy in their English—at least ill-advised in doing so. Indeed, my Merriam-Webster’s 11^th Collegiate Dictionary defines “celebrant” as “one who celebrates; specifically the priest officiating the Eucharist.” Likewise, the Collins English Dictionary—Complete and Unabridged defines “celebrant” as “a person participating in a religious ceremony” and, in Christianity’s ecclesiastical terms, as “an officiating priest, esp at the Eucharist.”

On the authority of these two dictionaries, I had never really bothered to check the validity of the conventional wisdom that anybody who’s not a priest or cleric should never be called a “celebrant” but only a “celebrator.” By “celebrator,” of course, practically everybody uses it in the context of someone observing or taking part in a notable occasion with festivities.

Recently, though, after witnessing yet another savage if good-natured ribbing of someone who used “celebrant” to describe a birthday celebrator, I decided that perhaps the issue was serious enough to look deeper into. I therefore resolved to check the usage with at least two other lexicographic authorities, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD).

The OED gives two definitions of “celebrant,” first as “a person who performs a rite, especially a priest at the Eucharist,” and, second, citing North American usage, as “a person who celebrates something.” For its part, the AHD primarily defines “celebrant” in essentially the same vein as the first OED definition, as (a) “A person who participates in a religious ceremony or rite”; (b) “A person who officiates at a religious or civil ceremony or rite, especially a wedding”; and (c) “In some Christian churches, the cleric officiating at the celebration of the Eucharist.” Like the OED, the AHD also makes a second definition of “celebrant” as “A participant in a celebration.”

Then the AHD goes one step further and makes the following usage note for “celebrant”: “Although ‘celebrant’ is most often used to describe an official participant in a religious ceremony or rite, a majority of the [AHD] Usage Panel accepted the use of ‘celebrant’ to mean ‘a participant in a celebration’ in an earlier survey. Still, while ‘New Year’s Eve celebrants’ may be an acceptable usage, ‘celebrator’ is an uncontroversial alternative in this more general sense.”

This being the case, I think people who use “celebrants” to describe people celebrating birthdays and other special occasions aren’t really wrong, and they certainly don’t deserve to be cut down and needled when using that word. And there’s no need for anyone to get upset either when called a “celebrant”—whether as principal or guest—during such occasions. I dare say that “celebrant” is as good a word as “celebrator” in such contexts, and except perhaps in the company of hidebound Christian fanatics, we need not hold the word “celebrant” in a straitjacket to describe only the Christian clergy doing their rituals.

In short, we can freely use “celebrators” to describe people celebrating or attending a birthday party or any other happy occasion, and I think the English-savvy among us need to get used to the idea that the usage of “celebrants” is actually par for the course and doesn’t deserve all that bashing as if it were bad English. (July 3, 2010)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, July 3, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

How the causatives enable intransitive verbs to overcome their intransitivity

As we all know, English has three types of verbs: transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, and linking verbs. A verb is transitive when it has the ability to pass on its action to an object or something that can receive that action; intransitive when it can’t pass on its action to anything in the sentence and simply dissipates that action in itself; and linking when it just connects a subject to a complement and makes the sentence flow properly.

We are all familiar with how transitive verbs and linking verbs work, so there should be no need to discuss them any further here. But I think we need to look more closely into how intransitive verbs work considering that they can’t pass on their action to an object. This is precisely what happens in sentences like “The witness disappeared” and “The boat arrived.” The intransitive verbs “disappeared” and “arrived” simply convey the idea that something has taken place; their respective subjects (“witness” and “boat”) don’t do the action, and these verbs can’t have any object either to receive that action. It therefore looks as if their intransitivity is such a big handicap as to make their usage in language marginal compared to transitive verbs.     

This isn’t the case, through. As I explain in the essay below that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2004, English has a grammatical device for making intransitive verbs surmount their handicap of intransitivity: the causatives. The causatives are a special class of verbs that, in effect, enable the subject to perform the action of an intransitive verb on an object. Causative verbs thus make intransitive verbs of much wider use in language despite the limitation imposed by their intransitivity. (June 4, 2011)

Helping intransitive verbs surmount their handicap

As we learn early about English grammar, intransitive verbs are handicapped by their inability to take a direct object. Another way of saying this is that a subject cannot perform the action of intransitive verbs on a direct object. This is why a sentence construction like the following doesn’t work: “The magician disappeared the rabbit.” Because of its intransitivity, the verb “disappear” simply won’t take “rabbit” or any other object. Only transitive verbs can take objects and act on them, as “feed” in “The magician feeds the rabbit” and “eat” in “The rabbit eats the carrot.”

But this doesn’t mean that when the operative verb is intransitive, the subject cannot ever make an action happen to an object, or make that object perform the action of the verb. We know, for instance, that the verbs “make,” “get,” “have,” and “let” enables the intransitive verb “disappear” to cause its action to happen to an object, as in these sentences: “The magician made the rabbit disappear.” “The magician got the rabbit to disappear.” “The magician had the rabbit disappear.” “The magician let the rabbit disappear.” The subject in these sentences is not seen as performing the action itself, but uses some other unstated agency (“magic” or “sleight of hand”?) to perform that action.

We know, too, that “make,” “get,” “have,” and “let” can also make objects do the action of intransitive verbs: “She made the dog jump.” “She got the dog to jump.” “She had the dog jump.” “She let the dog jump.” In these three sentences, it’s clear that the “dog” is the object of the verbs “made,” “got,” and “had,” “she” is the agent causing the action, and the action of the intransitive “jump” is what this agent causes the object to perform.

The verbs “make,” “get,” “have,” and “let” belong to a class of verbs called causatives. In sentences that use a causative verb, the subject doesn’t perform the action of the operative verb but causes someone or something else to do it. And as we have seen above, causative verbs do very well in enabling intransitive verbs to surmount their handicap of being unable to act on an object.

We mustn’t think, though, that causative verbs are meant only for intransitive verbs. They work as well with transitive ones: “The mother made her child take the medicine.” “The movie director had the leading lady wear a wig.” The big difference is that transitive verbs—working with causative verbs or not—always need an object somewhere in the sentence for the latter to make sense. Drop the objects “medicine” and “wig” from the two sentences given earlier, for instance, and both sentences will collapse.

The English language actually has many more causative verbs of the enabling kind, and to our small inventory so far we will now add these other common ones: “ask,” “allow,” “command,” “compel,” “convince,” “encourage,” “employ,” “entice,” “force,” “hire,” “induce,” “insist,” “motivate,” “permit,” “persuade,” “require,” “suggest,” and “urge.” Each needs to work on an operative verb for the latter’s action to take place at all.

Let’s now examine the ways we can construct sentences using causative verbs.

The most common, of course, is the construction where the causative verb is immediately followed by an object (noun or pronoun), which is followed in turn by an infinitive (“to” + verb stem): “Some countries require foreign visitors to present a visa.” “We hired temporary workers to handle the seasonal demand.” “Our school encouraged us to learn English.”

The causative construction above has a variant specifically for the causatives “let,” “had,” and “made,” which can only take the so-called “bare infinitive” (the infinitive without “to”): “Amanda let her boyfriend kiss her.” “The mayor had the illegal loggers face the irate townsfolk.” “The manager made her pay for the missing goods.” Force-fitting “to” into such constructions results in disconcerting—and unacceptable—sentences like “Amanda let her boyfriend to kiss her.”

The third type of causative construction is for the causative verbs “insist,” “suggest,” “ask,” “demand,” or “recommend,” which can neither take the infinitive nor the bare infinitive form of the operative verb. These causative verbs can work only in “that”-clause constructions like these: “The tour guide suggested that we leave.” “The judge demanded that the accused appear in court.” “The consultant recommended that we divest.”

The second verbs in these sentences are always in the base form, without tense, which differs from non-causative “that”-clause constructions like, say, “The tour guide proved that we took a longer route,” in which the verb in the “that”-clause takes a tense. (December 6, 2004)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, December 6, 2004 © 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.