Debunking the widespread canard that adverbs are bad for writing

Some writers and teachers of English ruthlessly denigrate adverbs in the same way as adjectives, with one of them even declaring that “most of the work of effective writing is that of selecting verbs and nouns which make adverbs and adjectives unnecessary.” As I observed in my long-ago essay in defense of adverbs (English Plain and Simple, Section 3, Chapter 17), they say such things as if English prose could, in fact, survive solely on a diet of verbs and nouns with absolutely no adverbs and adjectives. This isn’t the case at all. There are bad adverbs as there are bad adjectives, of course, and overusing them—particularly lazy adverbs ending in “-ly” such as “quickly” and “fantastically”—could indeed induce a bad case of reading nausea. But there are good, functional adverbs that we can’t afford to write totally without, and chief among them are the adverbs of time and the adverbs of frequency.

In an essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times and that now forms part of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge, I explained that the adverbs of time and the adverbs of frequency are the defining elements of the tenses. Our verbs need them for context in the time continuum, and only by putting them to work can we clearly convey to our readers or listeners the time frame, sequence, and frequency of the actions—grammatically, the verbs we use—in our narratives. I am now posting that essay here to counteract the widespread canard that adverbs as a whole are bad for our written and spoken English. (September 26, 2011)

Using the adverbs of time to clarify tense

When an action or event has taken place and how often it has taken place are abstractions that reside solely in our memory or in some recording medium like newspapers, books, and film. They no longer have a physical existence of their own. In contrast, we can easily put the “who,” “what,” “where,” and “how” of things in concrete terms. For instance, we can identify ourselves with nameplates or hang shingles to identify the occupants of doctor’s clinics, law offices, legislatures, and zoos (nouns); we can label certain faces, books, movies, or political maneuverings as disgusting, compelling, or noble (adjectives); or we can mark certain places and behaviors as uncommonly decent, unbelievably tawdry, or ignominiously warped (adverbs that modify adjectives).

It’s not as easy, however, to put our fingers on events in time. Making sense of the unfolding present and of the future is difficult enough, but understanding past events is even more so. This is because the latter have already passed through the time continuum to become abstractions, and our usual conceptual tools for dealing with them—the tenses acting on verbs—are inadequate to communicate them in context. Thus, whether reckoning with the past, present, or future, we need the adverbs of time and of frequency to convey them intelligibly to other people and to keep our thoughts of them alive.

Examine this simple sentence: “Look for the money.” The simple imperative of this sentence sounds clear enough. But on closer scrutiny, we discover that its call for action is inadequate and imprecise: How soon should we look for the money? Precisely when should we do it? How long should we do? Now see what happens when we clarify the sentence with adverbs of time: “Look for the money now.” “Look for the money tonight after office hours.” “Look for the money during the next three hours.” The adverbs of time have given the sentences precise, actionable meanings.

Not let’s examine another sentence: “He paints landscapes.” With no antecedent statement to establish context, it borders on the trivial. But see how it springs to life and relevance with the use adverbs of frequency: “He rarely paints landscapes.” “He regularly paints landscapes.” “He paints landscapes twice a month.” In each case the statement has become more real and palpable to us.

Indeed, the tenses by themselves can only give us a general sense of something occurring. By making the adverbs of time work with them, however, we can pinpoint the precise moment or period of their occurrence. The adverbs of time are, in fact, the defining elements of the tenses. Using the adverb “currently,” for instance, leaves us no choice but to use the present or present progressive tense: “She currently works with the United Nations secretariat.” “She is currently working with the United Nations secretariat.”

In contrast, when we use “recently,” we are forced to use the past tense or past progressive tense: “She recently worked with the United Nations secretariat.” “She was recently working with the United Nations secretariat.”

The adverbs of time are particularly crucial in establishing the perfect tenses—when an action has to be related to other actions happening before or after it. Take this example: “The woman had [already, just, barely, scarcely] dressed up when her lover knocked at the front door.” The adverbs of time create immediacy and tension in juxtaposed actions, and they do so in ways that the tenses alone can never achieve. Along with the adverbs of frequency, the adverbs of time heighten our awareness of our own actions in relation to the unfolding reality around us: “I knocked at her bedroom door once, twice, three times, then finally without letup, but there was no response; it was then, only then, that I realized that she had left me for good.”

The need to clearly mark in our minds the sequence and frequency of occurrences is so crucial that the English language has evolved scores of adverbs of time and of frequency. Take a look at the following short list:

Past adverbs of time:  “ago,” “after,” “already,” “once,” “before,” “beforehand,” “when,” “recently,” “then,” “since,” “since then,” “yesterday,” “last week.” “last month,” “last quarter,” and “last year.”

Present adverbs of time:  “now,” “nowadays,” “lately,” “of late,” “while,” “at this moment,” “at last,” “today,” and “tonight.”

Future adverbs of time:  “when,” “presently,” “soon,” “tomorrow,” “yet,” “as soon as possible” (ASAP), “later,” “after,” “immediately,” “heretofore,” “hereafter,” “henceforth,” “next day,” “next week,” “next month,” and “next year.”

Adverbs for continuous or repeated actions:  “by and by,” “again,” “occasionally,” “until,” “till,” “while,” “forever,” “always,” “off and on,” “continually,” “continuously,” “often,” “at length,” and “perpetually.”

Adverbs of frequency:  “rarely,” “seldom,” “frequently,” “sometimes,” “oftentimes,” “now and then,” “never,” “once,” “twice,” “thrice,” “daily,” “nightly,” “weekly,” “monthly,” “quarterly,” “annually,” and “seasonally.”

These adverbs of time and adverbs of frequency are, of course, not the only ones we can find in the language. We can actually create hundreds more by using them as basic building blocks, and the more effectively we can make them work with the tenses, the better we can understand the things that happen in our lives and the clearer we can communicate them to others.

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From the book Give Your English the Winning Edge by Jose A. Carillo © 2009 by the author, © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

When media permits a grammatically flawed official statement to see print

If you are a reporter for an English-language media outlet, what’s the proper way to report the official statements of people who speak in less than impeccable English? Do you quote them verbatim—grammar errors and all—for total and uncompromising journalistic objectivity? Or do you correct their statements for grammar and usage errors so as not to embarrass them and avoid foisting bad English on your readers or listeners?

Of course, English-savvy reporters and editors faced with this dilemma routinely do the right thing—quote  statements verbatim when they are truly quotable and free of grammar errors, or else paraphrase those statements when they aren’t really quote-worthy and are grammatically faulty as well. But sometimes, when reporters or editors lower their guard or are themselves not very proficient in English, they let pass quoted statements that reflect very badly not only on those who gave or uttered them but also on those who reported or edited them. 

This is what happened in the case of the quoted statement I dissected in the essay below, which I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in 2006. I am posting it here as a practical lesson in grammar and usage as well as an exercise in basic copyediting. (September 18, 2011) 

An exercise in reporting a grammatically flawed statement

Assume that you are a reporter of a major daily newspaper and that you have just covered a media conference of an international foreign-aid organization. During the conference, the organization’s highest-ranking official in the country said these exact words in English: “The best time to prevent bird flu is now. Until the cases are low, let us stay ahead of the epidemic.”

Something is terribly wrong with that statement’s English, of course, and you’re sure that the speaker wasn’t misquoted because you had taped the interview. But your deadline is only two hours away, so you must decide right now how to deal with that statement in your story.

What will you do with its bad English?

(A) Quote the exact words of the speaker. It’s true that its English is faulty, but since the statement came from a well-educated medical professional, you feel that every word of it should be respected and retained. They are not your own words, after all, and you’re secure in your belief that people who talk to media should be held responsible for their bad English. If it gets printed verbatim and embarrasses them, that’s just too bad. Your job is to report the news accurately and clearly, not to correct other people’s poor English.

(B) Analyze the grammar and semantics of the statement carefully to see how best to report it. You believe that no respectable paper should give room for bad English, whether attributed or unattributed. You know that when reporters habitually allow bad English to creep into their stories, they can seriously jeopardize not only their reputation but also the integrity of their information sources and of their respective newspapers.

Some newspaper reporters and magazine writers are sometimes tempted to take the line of least resistance by choosing option A, but for any self-respecting journalist, Option B is actually the only prudent course of action. We will therefore assume that most of us have chosen Option B and are now ready to find better ways of expressing the problematic direct quotation presented earlier.

The English of the first sentence, “The best time to prevent bird flu is now,” is arguably good enough so we’ll let it stand as is. That of the second sentence, however, is seriously flawed and confusing: “Until the cases are low, let us stay ahead of the epidemic.” The speaker has wrongly used the conjunction “until” to mean “up to the time that,” in the sense that a particular state is not yet achieved. But she acknowledges that the particular state being referred to (“low”) already subsists or persists, so the correct conjunction to use is “while,” which means “during the time that.” “Until” is an illogical, semantically wrong substitute for “while” in this particular sentence.

Next, the speaker commits another serious gaffe when she inappropriately describes the noun “cases” using the adjective “low,” which is intended to mean “of lesser degree, size, or amount than average or ordinary.” In English grammar, such usage doesn’t make semantic sense. We can’t describe “cases” of a particular noun, such as bird flu, as either “low” or “high”; there can be no “low cases” and “high cases.” It is the incidence of “cases” that can be described as such. To give an idea of their relative numbers, the adjectives “few” and “many” (or “numerous”) should be used instead.

The speaker’s use of the phrase “stay ahead” in her second sentence, although not strictly wrong grammatically, is also questionable semantically. The verb “stay” denotes “pausing,” “ceasing,” and “remaining,” thus giving a strong sense of a stationary state rather than a forward movement, which is obviously what the speaker wanted to convey. Since the verb “keep” more appropriately conveys the active effort needed to maintain the condition of being ahead, “keep ahead” would be a much more suitable phrase.

When we take all these clarifications into account, what emerges as the grammatically and semantically correct way of saying what the speaker actually said is this: “The best time to prevent bird flu is now. While its incidence is still low, let us keep ourselves ahead of the epidemic.” Another correct construction is this: “The best time to prevent bird flu is now. While the cases are still few, let us keep ourselves ahead of the epidemic.”

Of course, we must remember that we can’t present these two improved versions as the exact words of the speaker herself. It’s a time-honored convention in journalism that once we make substantive changes in the speaker’s exact words, we can no longer treat them as directly quoted material. They become a paraphrased statement, which does away with the quotation marks that set off verbatim statements from their attribution. (January 4, 2006)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, January 4, 2006 © 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

The construction of comparative sentences involving possessives

In English, it’s quite a simple thing to compare two entities directly, as in “Eve was perhaps older than Adam by a few days,” but the grammar gets somewhat more complicated when what’s to be compared is an attribute, a possession, or a part of those entities. Indeed, how do we correctly construct a sentence comparing the heights of the Great Pyramid of Giza and of the Eiffel Tower in Paris? We can’t say “The height of the Eiffel Tower is 77.5 meters greater than the Great Pyramid of Giza”—not because the given figure is wrong but because the grammar of the comparative isn’t right. So then, how do we construct the comparison correctly?

In my essay below that came out in my English-usage column in The Manila Times in October of 2010, I explained to a Forum member precisely how to make such a comparative sentence grammatically aboveboard in every respect. (September 11, 2011)

Differentiating the use of “than” and “than that of” 

In making comparisons, when should “than that of” be used instead of “than”?

I was asked this question several days ago by a student-member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum whose username is Forces20. She said she wanted to understand the logic behind the choice between the two comparative forms.

She wrote: “Let’s consider this sentence as an example: ‘As a teacher, his salary is even less than that of a driver.’ Why shouldn’t this sentence be written instead as ‘As a teacher, his salary is even less than a driver’?

“Also this sentence: ‘The new library is undoubtedly well-stocked and functional but no one can say that its atmosphere is like the old one.’ Why should it be revised to this: ‘The new library is undoubtedly well-stocked and functional but no one can say that its atmosphere is like that of the old one’?”

I explained to Forces20 that the fundamental difference between the comparatives “than” and “than that of” is in the nature of the elements being compared. We use “than” when we compare two objects or things directly with each other, as in “Your laptop is more powerful than my laptop” or, more succinctly, “Your laptop is more powerful than mine.”

On the other hand, we use “than that of” when we compare not the two objects or things themselves but an attribute, possession, or part of theirs, as in “The processor of your laptop is more powerful than that of mine.” This particular comparative construction is, of course, an elliptical, more succinct version of this sentence: “The processor of your laptop is more powerful than the processor of your laptop.” The pointing pronoun “that” replaces the name of the thing whose attribute, possession, or part is being compared with that of the other, and the pronoun “mine” replaces the name of the other thing involved in the comparison.

If we simply use “than” instead of “than that of” when comparing the attribute, possession, or part of the elements being compared, a semantic problem or ambiguity in meaning might result, as in this sentence: “The processor of your laptop is more powerful than mine.” Here, it’s not clear if the pronoun “mine” refers to the processor of the other person’s laptop or to the laptop itself. The form “than that of” clarifies that ambiguity: “The processor of your laptop is more powerful than that of mine.”

Now, in the examples Forces20 presented, the sentence “As a teacher, his salary is even less than a driver” is grammatically flawed because it is illogically comparing the teacher’s salary to the driver, not to the driver’s salary. The comparative form “less than that of” fixes the problem: “As a teacher, his salary is even less than that of a driver.”

The other sentence she presented, “The new library is undoubtedly well-stocked and functional but no one can say that its atmosphere is like the old one,” has the same problem. It wrongly compares the atmosphere of the new library with the old library itself, when the real comparison should be between their respective atmospheres. The use of the comparative form “like that of” corrects and clarifies that comparison: “The new library is undoubtedly well-stocked and functional but no one can say that its atmosphere is like that of the old one.”

But the form “than that of” may not be necessary in some comparative constructions involving possessives. Take a look at these two examples: “Albert’s grade in science is higher than Bert’s.” Its version that uses “than that of” for the comparison is also correct but less straightforward: “Albert’s grade in science is higher than that of Bert.” On the other hand, this sentence, “Our basketball team’s record is more impressive than our competitor’s,” is more concise and better-sounding than “Our basketball team’s record is more impressive than that of our competitor.” (October 23, 2010)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, October 23, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

P.S. For those who’d like to know precisely how I got the figure “77.5 meters,” here’s the bit of arithmetic that I did: The Eiffel Tower is 324 meters high, and the Great Pyramid of Giza is 146.5 meters high, so the former is higher than the latter by 324 meters minus 146.5 meters = 77.5 meters. Following the grammar prescription in the above essay, therefore, the correct and concise sentence construction for that comparative is this: “The height of the Eiffel Tower is 77.5 meters greater than that of the Great Pyramid of Giza.”

The wisdom of routinely avoiding anticipatory “there is/there are” clauses

Let’s face it. A lot of people—native or nonnative English speakers alike—get into the habit of using the so-called anticipatory “there is/there are” clause when talking off the cuff, as in “There’s something fishy happening but I just can’t figure it out.” It does sound and feel as the easiest and most natural thing to begin talking, even if many teachers of English pointedly advise that it’s better and more concise to knock off that anticipatory clause and simply say “Something’s fishy but I just can’t figure it out.” As many of us will probably remember, their chief but seemingly counterintuitive argument against “there is/there are” clauses is that it just fosters lazy thinking among its users.

In an essay I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in April of 2010, I discussed an even stronger reason for routinely avoiding anticipatory “there is/there are” clauses—the fact that the usage is fraught with subject-verb disagreement pitfalls when used indiscriminately. I am now posting that essay here to serve as a continuing reminder of the wisdom of that cautionary advice. (September 4, 2011)

The pitfalls in using “there is”/“there are” clauses

A few days ago, I received through e-mail the following very interesting grammar question from Dantreys, a member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum:

“Hi, Joe! An opinion writer in one of the major broadsheets wrote an article yesterday that contained this sentence:

“‘There was once a time when there was more than one exchange existing all at the same time.’

“I feel a bit queasy about the sentence because something tells me the correct verb right before ‘more’ should be ‘were’ since it refers to ‘more than one exchange,’ which, notionally, is a plural subject. What do you think?”

Here’s my reply to Dantreys:

The sentence in question is an example of a construction that uses the so-called “anticipatory ‘there’ clause” twice. The pronoun “there,” of course, is the anticipatory subject in each case. In such constructions, “there” carries little or no independent meaning but simply points forward to the notional subject that’s placed later in the sentence for reasons of end weight or emphasis. That notional subject is the noun phrase “once a time” for the first anticipatory “there,” and “more than one exchange” for the second anticipatory “there.”

Now, your question is: Since the operative verb “was” refers to “more than one exchange,” which is a plural subject, shouldn’t that verb take the plural form “were” instead to ensure subject-verb agreement?

The correct usage in this case remains debatable today, but my personal preference is to use the singular “was” instead of “were”; in effect, I’m saying that the use of “was” by that broadsheet’s opinion writer is grammatically correct. This usage preference is the so-called descriptivist position, which maintains that since the “there is” combination is mostly followed by a singular subject, it has become a standard way of introducing a subject, whether singular or plural.  

In American English, in particular, when a compound subject follows the verb in a “there is” construction, the verb very often takes the singular form, as in this sentence: “There is shame and dishonor in being found to be unfit for public office.” See and feel how badly that sentence sounds when “there are” is used instead: “There are shame and dishonor in being found to be unfit for public office.”

The prescriptivist position, on the other hand, recommends that after the expletive “there,” the verb is singular or plural depending on whether the subject that follows is singular or plural. This is actually the usage that you said you’re more comfortable with: “There was once a time when there were more than one exchange existing all at the same time.” It looks and sounds a little bit awkward to me, but I’m not saying that it’s grammatically wrong. So long as you are consistent with the usage and you can explain your position, I don’t think there should be any problem.

Having said that, however, let me add that English teachers of the traditional bent discourage the use of the expletives “there is” (and “it is”) by students, arguing that this usage fosters lazy thinking. My own position is that expletives are tolerable when used sparingly and judiciously—perhaps no more than once or twice every one or two pages of the standard manuscript page. But when the anticipatory “there” is used twice in a row in the same sentence, which is the case in that opinion writer’s sentence, the resulting construction is decidedly awkward and convoluted.

As an editor, in fact, I always suggest routinely avoiding “there is” constructions because of their needless, oftentimes confusing complexity. It’s better to simplify the sentence in question by eliminating the second of its anticipatory “there” clauses: “There was once a time when more than one exchange existed all at the same time.” Better still, by eliminating the first anticipatory “there” clause as well: “One time, more than one exchange existed all at the same time.” (April 10, 2010)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 10, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Deconstructing and understanding those puzzling elliptical sentences

During the past three weeks, several members of Jose Carillo's English Forum made postings that expressed puzzlement over certain sentences that seemed to make sense grammatically even if they were clearly faulty in structure, with some words—sometimes even the obligatory verb—conspicuously missing. In practically every case, those sentences turned out to be elliptical sentences—sentences that surprisingly read right and sound right even if they appear to violate grammatical and structural rules with impunity.

To help learners of English deconstruct and understand such sentences, I wrote “The virtue of elliptical constructions,” a two-part essay for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2005. I am now posting that essay here not only to amplify and substantiate the quick explanations I have given to inquiring Forum members but also to give solid grounding on the subject to all those seeking to further enhance their English. (August 28, 2011)

The virtue of elliptical constructions

Part I:

Often in our English-language readings, we come across sentences that have certain words evidently missing yet surprisingly read right and sound right as well: “Those who wish to [...] can very well join me.” “The youngest staff in the office is as competent as the eldest [...].” “If she wants more of those 1905 coins, my brother can give her plenty [...].” In each instance, although a noun and a verb have been shed off somewhere, the sentences prove to be grammatically and semantically correct. They are, in fact, none the worse for the grammatical holes in them.

As suggested by the three periods enclosed by brackets, each of those grammatical holes is an ellipsis, and the sentences where they occur are called elliptical sentences. We can say that elliptical sentences reflect the natural aversion of humans to unnecessarily repeat themselves. The elliptical sentences shown above, for instance, are simply more concise constructions of these sentences: “Those who wish to join me can very well join me.” “The youngest staff in the office is as competent as the eldest staff in the office.” “If she wants more of those 1905-issue coins, my brother can give her plenty of those 1905-issue coins.”

By now the pattern and logic of elliptical constructions should be clear: they gracefully knock off repetitive words and phrases. The ellipsis takes it for granted that the reader would just mentally fill in the gaps with the missing grammatical elements.

As a rule, elliptical sentences consist of two independent clauses, one containing the grammar elements the other has left out. The independent clause with the missing elements is the elliptical clause—an abbreviated adverb clause stripped of its subject and verb.

Consider this sentence: “Although she is known for her ravishing beauty, Cornelia has an uncommonly vile temper.” Its adverb clause is “she is known for her ravishing beauty,” with “although” as subordinating marker; the independent clause is “Cornelia has an uncommonly vile temper.” Now see what happens when we make the adverb clause elliptical: “Although […] known for her ravishing beauty, Cornelia has an uncommonly vile temper.” Even after shedding “she is,” the sentence works just fine—more concise and emphatic, in fact, than the scrupulously complete one.

Ellipses can streamline sentences in many ways. Here are some of the common elliptical forms we’ll usually encounter in our English-language readings:

(1) The routine omission of “that” in modifying clauses, particularly in spoken English. This is the most familiar use of the ellipsis. Example: “They knew […] two years would be the shortest time […] they would need to subdue the enemy forces.” (Normal form: “They knew that two years would be the shortest time that they would need to subdue the enemy forces.”) Tongues are normally averse to wagging too many “that’s.”

(2) Elliptical noun phrases. Example: “Jennifer asked for the pink blouse but the salesclerk gave her the red […].” (Normal form: “Jennifer asked for the pink blouse but the salesclerk gave her the red blouse.”) Quite naturally, the disciplined mind resists the need to belabor the obvious.

(3) Ellipsis of the verb and its objects or complements. Example: “The beleaguered Supreme Court chief justice would fight it to the very end if he could […].” (Normal form: “The beleaguered Supreme Court chief justice would fight it to the very end if he could fight it to the very end.”)

(4) Medial (middle) ellipsis.  Example: “Arlene will take care of the girls and Eduardo […], the boys.” (Normal form: “Arlene will take care of the girls and Eduardo will take care of the boys.”) This fine ellipsis separates sophisticated English-language users from rank beginners.

(5) Ellipsis of clause. Examples: “They can leave now if they want […].” (Normal form: “They can leave now if they want to leave now.”) Certain elliptical clauses, however, need a comma to indicate that some words have been intentionally left out; otherwise, confusion might arise. Properly elliptical: “My tour group chose Paris; theirs, Rome.” Improperly elliptical: “My tour group chose Paris; theirs Rome.” (Normal form: “My tour group chose Paris; their group chose Rome.”)

(6) Ellipsis when words are left out in comparisons using “that” or “as.”  This is the trickiest ellipsis of all because we need to first establish the correct pronoun by filling in the missing words in the elliptical clause. Consider these two sentences: “Helen loves you more than I.” “Helen loves you more than me.” Gut feel tells us that only one of them is grammatically correct, but both actually are. For each of the sentences, in fact, we can fill in the missing words in a different way. The first turns out to be the elliptical construction of “Helen loves you more than I love you”; the second, of “Helen loves you more than she loves me.” Each is as grammatically and semantically airtight as the other.

Isn’t it nice that with the ellipsis, we can have it short and sweet both ways? (April 25, 2005)

Part II:

We continue our discussion of the ellipsis, which we defined in the preceding essay as a streamlining device that deliberately knocks off words and phrases from sentences and does not bother to replace them, depending instead on the reader or listener to mentally fill in the missing words based on context. We already took up the noun ellipsis, a gap in prose that takes the place of the noun phrase referred to in a previous clause or sentence. This time we will look more closely into the two other major types of ellipsis:  the verb ellipsis and the clause ellipsis.

Verb ellipsis. This type of ellipsis comes in two kinds. The first is the verb ellipsis that knocks off the verb and the modifying phrase that follows that verb, as in this statement: “He is a magnanimous yet strict boss, generous almost to a fault but never hesitant to dismiss incompetent people from their jobs when he has to […].” Here, the ellipsis dropped the second mention of the verb “dismiss” and the words “incompetent people from their jobs” to avoid needless repetition. The result is a more compact and elegant sentence than this one that doesn’t use ellipsis: “He is a magnanimous yet strict boss, generous almost to a fault but never hesitant to dismiss incompetent people from their jobs when he has to dismiss incompetent people from their jobs.”

Here’s another example: “It’s a pity that the new marketing assistant has to go. Our personnel manager was convinced that she didn’t perform well in her job, but on the whole, I really think she did […].” Here, the ellipsis dropped the second mention of the verb “perform” and the words “well in her job” to streamline the statement. See how repetitive the statement becomes when it doesn’t use ellipsis: “It’s a pity that the new secretary has to go. Our personnel manager was convinced that she didn’t perform well in her job, but on the whole, I really think she did perform well in her job.”

The second type of the verb ellipsis, on the other hand, knocks off the subject and the finite verb of a sentence. In the following statement, for example, the second, third and fourth sentences are elliptically constructed: “Can you imagine what we should be doing now had we joined the company outing? […] Swimming at the beach. […] Playing billiards at the clubhouse. Or […] singing at the karaoke bar at one of the beach cottages.” See how tedious and weird-sounding that passage becomes if, instead of using ellipses, it repeatedly uses the subject “what we should be doing now” and the finite verb “is” in all of the three succeeding sentences: “Can you imagine what we should be doing now had we joined the company outing? What we should be doing now is swimming at the beach. What we should be doing now is playing billiards at the clubhouse. Or what we should be doing now is singing at the karaoke bar at one of the beach cottages.”

Clause ellipsis. This type of ellipsis drops most of the words of the clause referred to in a previous sentence, simply retaining the question word “why,” “what,” “where,” or “how” to announce the missing parts of the clause.

A clause ellipsis that uses the question word “why”: “Most people go through life without examining their fiercely held religious and political beliefs. They blindly run their affairs based on these beliefs not knowing why […].” See how repetitious this statement becomes without the ellipsis: “Most people go through life without examining their fiercely held religious and political beliefs. They blindly run their affairs based on these beliefs not knowing why they blindly run their affairs based on these beliefs.”

A clause ellipsis that uses the question word “what”: “You’ve been asking me what I have been doing all these years. Trying to live a good life, that’s what […].” Gracelessly repetitive without the ellipsis: “You’ve been asking me what I have been doing all these years. Trying to live a good life, that’s what I have been doing all these years.”

A clause ellipsis that uses the question word “where”: “We should be able to find a place to cool off from this terrible heat. The only problem is where […].” Terribly wordy without the ellipsis: “We should be able find a place to cool off from this terrible heat. The only problem is where to find a place to cool off from this terrible heat.”    

These, then, are some of the many ways that the ellipsis can make our writing and speech more cohesive, compact, and forceful. We should use them at every opportunity to give not only greater convincing power but also a touch of elegance to our prose. (May 2, 2005)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 25 and May 2, 2005 © 2005 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. The essay in Part I later appeared as Chapter 70 in the book Giving Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo.

When there are compelling reasons for using the passive voice

Last week, I posted here an essay arguing that good writing isn’t the all-active-voice affair that our English teachers had most likely made us believe, and that there is, in fact, a perfectly valid place and role for passive-voice sentences in both our written and spoken English. That 2004 essay in my English-usage column in The Manila Times was actually followed in quick succession by two more essays enjoining writers to reexamine their acquired aversion to the passive voice. The second of those essays, “When even the passive voice is not enough,” already appeared here in a posting several months back. This time, to complete the trilogy, I am posting the third essay, “Crafting our sentences to their context,” where I recommend the use of the passive voice when there are compelling grammatical and semantic reasons to do so. (August 21, 2011)

Crafting our sentences to their context

We will further pursue my thesis in two previous essays (“In defense of the passive voice” and “When even the passive voice is not enough”) that we should not totally rely on the active voice, and that the passive voice is in itself a powerful form for precisely crafting our sentences to their context. Although the active voice is a handy default vehicle for expressing ourselves clearly, the passive voice is the only semantically correct choice if we want to call attention to the receiver of the action, to the instrument used in the action, or to the action itself.

One major virtue of the English language is, in fact, the many options it offers for constructing sentences to yield more or less the same meaning. We must keep in mind, though, that these sentences are rarely the same semantically; their shades of meaning and focus differ by appreciable degrees. To understand these differences, let’s take a look at the basic English clause pattern: “Alicia [subject, as actor] gave [verb, as the action] Roberto [indirect object, as the beneficiary] a tender hug [direct object, as the goal].” 

We already took up three ways by which the passive voice can change this basic clause pattern: (1) make the indirect object the subject of the sentence: “Roberto was given a tender hug by Alicia.”; (2) make the direct object the subject: “A tender hug was given by Alicia to Roberto.”; and (3) make the act itself the subject: “Alicia’s hugging of Roberto was tender.” The passive voice purposively diminishes the importance of the subject or actor so it can draw greater attention to the indirect or direct receivers of the action, or to the action itself.

The passive voice becomes even more useful when it is not necessary or desirable to mention the subject or doer of the action at all. In science and technical writing, for instance, the passive voice is the conventional choice because the doer of the action is often obvious, unimportant, or unknown: “An intensive search for an antidote to the raging avian flu virus is underway.” The active voice, in contrast, gives unwarranted importance to the unknown doer of the action at the expense of what’s being done, which in this case is more important. For that reason, this active-voice sentence is rabidly cockeyed indeed: “Veterinary-disease researchers intensively seek an antidote to the raging avian flu virus.”

And the passive voice, of course, is not all that rare even in journalism, the ultimate redoubt of the active voice. Take this horrible this active-voice news lead: “This reporter found out today that the complainants in the Manila electioneering case had falsified evidence.” More sensible, more logical is this passive voice construction: “The evidence in the Manila electioneering case was falsified by the complainants.”

An even more compelling reason for using the passive voice has little to do with grammar but more with the art of communication itself. It is the need for restraint, prudence, tact and diplomacy in the workplace and in our day-to-day personal interactions. The active voice is particularly unsuitable for situations where it directly and unequivocally attributes an error, mistake, or failing to someone, thus squarely putting the blame on him or her. With the passive voice, we can be scrupulously correct without pointing an accusing finger at anybody, and can deliberately keep certain things vague to let others save face.

Assume, for instance, that your advertising agency has bungled its bid for a large consumer products account, and that the reason was that, at the last minute, your immediate superior doubled the budget you had recommended. This was mainly why the prospective client chose the other agency, whose proposed budget happened to be, well, about the same as your original figures. How deliciously tempting it would be to report the fiasco straightforwardly and invoke the active-voice rule for doing so! “We lost the account because my boss insisted on doubling the proposed budget that I had strongly recommended, which of course the prospective client found excessively high. Its winning bid turned out to be only half as ours.”

The active voice here, of course, tells one painful truth that will not set you free—it is one, in fact, that’s guaranteed to instantly kill off careers and relationships. How much more politic to use the passive voice for that truth: “Our proposed budget for the advertising campaign was doubled shortly before our presentation to client, thus making it twice the bid of the agency that won the account.” Everybody in your agency would know what really happened anyway, so there’s no need to rub it in by using the active voice flagrantly.

The choice between the active voice and the passive voice, then, is not just a matter of grammar. It is at the heart of the matter of our use of the language itself. (February 10, 2004)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 10, 2004 © 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. This essay later appeared as Chapter 68 in the book Giving Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo.

Shedding off the active-voice straitjacket from our English

In school, teachers of English furiously drill into the heads of their students the idea that they should always write sentences in the active voice. This creates such a strong bias—I would call it an aversion—that practically eliminates the passive voice in the English of those students even after they graduate and pursue their respective careers.

I must admit that I was one those who had acquired this bias against the passive voice, pursuing that bias like a zealot in my early writing and editing career. This was further abetted by my exposure to campus journalism and newspaper journalism, both of which demand the active voice even more relentlessly for immediacy’s sake. Later on, however, I began to sense that my predilection to writing all-active-voice sentences tended to give my narratives and expositions a mechanical, almost rubberstamp character. Then it fully dawned on me that good writing isn’t the all-active-voice affair that our English teachers had made us believe, and that there is, in fact, a perfectly valid place and role for passive-voice sentences in both our written and spoken English.

I gave vent to this realization of mine in “In Defense of the Passive Voice,” an essay that I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2004. I am now posting it here in the hope of making more people realize as I did many years ago that although a good thing, the active voice need not be a straitjacket to our natural instinct for clear, relevant, and forceful expression. (August 14, 2011)

In defense of the passive voice

The active voice has a cult following in English grammar. This is because from grade school onwards, most everybody is taught that sentences in the subject-verb-predicate form are the be-all and end-all of English, and that the passive voice is such a weak, fuzzy, and undesirable construction to even bother using. Grammar teachers furiously drill into every student’s head that the active-voice sentence “Emilio hit Andres violently with a bat” is superior to the passive “Andres was hit violently by Emilio with a bat” or to the similarly passive “A bat was used by Emilio to violently hit Andres.” The active-voice sentence in time achieves icon status, never to be resisted or questioned. No wonder, then, that many English language users—particularly those who learn it as a second or third language—write English-language essays almost entirely in clumsy, rubberstamp active-voice sentences, and speak English like the perpetually active-voice talking robots that inhabit science-fiction movies.

The truth is that when we get down to the dynamics of language, it is difficult not to conclude that a totally active-voice essay, prose narrative, or speech is neither a practical nor a desirable goal. English that uses an unbroken train of active-voice sentences, with no passive-voice ones whatsoever, is in many ways the equivalent of speaking stridently all the time or of singing a song on a high note from start to finish. We all know how exhausting that is both to the performer and the audience. Indeed, one virtue of the passive voice is that it works to leaven such verbal performances, providing low-energy counterpoints to the high-energy semantic field created by active-voice sentences: “We danced. We sang. We caroused. But soon we were put to sleep by fatigue.”

An even more compelling reason for using passive sentences, however, is that they are the most natural and oftentimes the only logical choice for communicating certain ideas. To see how true this is, let’s go back to the active-voice sentence we used as an example above: “Emilio hit Andres violently with a bat.” Assume now that right after you have said this, someone asks for a clarification. If that person is more interested in Andres’s well-being than in Emilio’s motive for assaulting him, his question will most probably take this form: “What did you say happened to Andres?” Your answer, of course, will not be the active-voice “Emilio hit Andres violently with a bat,” which highlights what Emilio did to him. That answer will be ridiculously out of context. The only logical answer is the passive-voice “Andres was hit violently by Emilio with a bat,” which rightly highlights what happened to Andres.

Then, if your interlocutor further asks, “What instrument did you say was used?”, it definitely wouldn’t be sensible to use the same active-voice answer, “Emilio hit Andres violently with a bat.” That would be very obtuse and strange indeed! The sensible answer will be another passive-voice sentence, perhaps “A bat was used by Emilio to violently hit Andres.” Finally, your interlocutor may dun you with this question, “How would you describe the act done by Emilio against Andres?” Your answer will perhaps be more ponderous and measured this time—the way we give such replies in real life—but it will definitely be in the passive voice: “Emilio’s act of hitting Andres with a bat was done violently.”

So what does this tell us about how we should fashion our sentences? Well, it is that we should write them or say them in the most logical and natural way possible—using the active voice whenever called for, but never hesitating to use the passive when logic and good sense demands it. So, unless your English teacher forces you to stick to the active voice on pain of failing in the subject, or your editors give you a standing order never to use the passive voice or be forever assigned to doing obituaries, the active voice should only be a secondary consideration. Much more important is to emphasize the sentence elements that you want to emphasize and need to emphasize. If it is the doer of the action that needs emphasis, then by all means use the active voice. But if is the receiver of the action, the instrument used in the action, or the action itself that needs it, you really have no choice but to use the passive voice.

The active voice certainly has its virtues, chiefly that it reflects how things really happen in real life—“Someone or something does something this way or that”—but it need not be a straitjacket to our natural instinct for clear, relevant, and forceful expression. The passive voice gives us both the opportunity and the latitude to focus on what we really need to focus on, to say exactly what we mean. Our prose and our speech will be squandering that opportunity and latitude by inflexibly deferring to the cult of the active voice. (February 9, 2004)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 9, 2004 © 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. This essay later appeared as Chapter 66 in the book Giving Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo.