When English gets laced with legalese and other forms of jargon

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

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

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

That lecturer’s stern prescriptions are these:

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

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

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

My reply to Justine:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

          IMAGE CREDIT: EXAMPLES.YOURDICTIONARY.COM

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

                          IMAGE CREDIT: SLIDEPLAYER.COM

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

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

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

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

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

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

       IMAGE CREDIT: FACEBOOK.COM/PHIJURISOFFICIAL/PHOTOS

            FORMS OF LEGALESE IN PHILIPPINE JURISPRUDENCE

           (Above, left photo)

           CLEAR, UNDERSTANDABLE LEGALESE:                                              

           Jurisprudence on social justice                                                             

          "The policy of social justice is not intended to                                                          

           countenance wrongdoing simply because                                    

           it is committed by the underprivileged."                                   

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

          (Above, right photo)                                                                                     

           TOUGH LEGALESE BORDERING ON JARGON:

           Jurisprudence on marital incapacity

           "Emotional immaturity and irresponsibility could                                                                                                                

           not be equated with psychological Incapacity."

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

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

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

               IMAGE CREDIT: EDUCBA.COM

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

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

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

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

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

                 IMAGE CREDIT: SLIDESERVE.COM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

********** 

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

In Defense of the Serial Comma

ESSAYS BY JOSE CARILLO RETROSPECTIVE:
Using the serial comma is not just a matter of stylistic preference

It might seem like it’s just a matter of personal stylistic preference, but unlike most journalists and writers, I am a consistent user of the serial comma in both my private correspondence and published work. The serial comma, for those who happen not to have heard of it, is the comma placed immediately before the conjunctions “and,” “or,” or “nor” that precedes the final item in a serial list of three or more items, as in this sentence: “The European tourist visited Manila, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Bangkok last summer.” Most newspaper writers and editors routinely do away with serial commas, though, and would write that sentence this way: “The European tourist visited Manila, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok last summer.”

Now the question is: Am I just being dense or bullheaded in using the serial comma when most everybody else routinely gets rid of it? I had the occasion to defend my preference when it was challenged by a foreign reader of my English-usage column in The Manila Times in 2019, and I thought of posting that defense in that week’s edition of the Forum for the appreciation of those who still have an open mind about the matter. 

             INFOGRAPHIC CREDIT: KAUFERDMC.COM 

Here's that column of mine on the serial comma:

Sometime ago, a foreign reader of my column in The Manila Times raised an eyebrow over my use of the comma before the conjunction “and” in this sentence: “The (author) unravels the various mechanisms and tools of English for combining words and ideas into clear, logical, and engaging writing.”

The foreign reader commented: “There is a comma after the second to the last adjective, and I noted that you do this all the time. Has some authority changed convention?”

That comma that made him uncomfortable is, of course, the serial comma, which is also called the Oxford comma and the Harvard comma. It’s the comma placed by some writers like me—but avoided by most editors and writers of Philippine newspapers and magazines—immediately before the conjunction “and,” “or,” or “nor” that precedes the final item in a list of three or more items. Admittedly, its use has remained debatable up to this day among writers and editors in various parts of the world.

Here’s how I justified my consistent use of the serial comma to that foreign reader: 

Yes, I use the serial comma all the time as a matter of stylistic choice. I just happen to have imbibed the serial-comma tradition from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, the Chicago Manual of Style, and H.W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage. However, during my early days as a campus journalist and later as a general assignments reporter for a daily newspaper (The Philippines Herald, 1972), I would routinely knock off my serial commas because that newspaper I was working with had adopted the no-serial-comma preference of American print media, particularly The New York Times and the Associated Press. If I didn’t knock off those serial commas myself, my editors would do so anyway and sullenly admonish me not to foist my personal preference over the house rule.   

But no, the convention on whether or not to use the serial comma hasn’t changed at all. I’m aware that the no-serial-comma tradition remains a widespread stylistic practice of the mass media in the United Kingdom as well as in Canada, Australia, and South Africa. But personally, I just want to be consistent after making a personal choice based on my own experience in dealing with problems of punctuation over the years.

       The Oxford comma: Decried, defended, and debated

Of course, the usefulness of the serial comma might not be readily apparent and appreciated when the items in a sentence with a serial list consist only of a single word or two, as in the following sentences:

“She bought some apples, oranges and pears.”

“For the role of Hamlet, the choices are Fred Santos, Tony Cruz, Jimmy Reyes and George Perez.” 

But see what happens when the listed items consist of long phrases with more than four or five words:

“The major businesses in the domestic pet services industry are traditional veterinary services, fancy pet grooming and makeover shops, a wide assortment of animal and bird food, freshwater and marine fish of various kinds and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”

Now, try to figure out where each enumerative item ends and begins in the phrase “freshwater and marine fish of various kinds and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”

In contrast, see how clear and unequivocal the last two items in the list become when we deploy a serial comma between “various kinds” and “aquarium equipment,” as follows:

“The major businesses in the domestic pet services industry are traditional veterinary services, fancy pet grooming and makeover shops, a wide assortment of animal and bird food, freshwater and marine fish of various kinds, and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”

I therefore think it’s better to use a serial comma by default in such situations regardless of how long the phrase for each item is in the enumerative sequence. This way, we can consistently avoid confusing readers and avoid violating their sense of rhythm and balance. (July 4, 2009)

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

This article first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, June 4, 2009 © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Retrospective on Notable Works in English by Our Very Own

Overlooked for Months, Connecting Flights Finally Connects With Me

(First posted in Jose Carillo's English Forum, November 19, 2010)

Lest I be accused of insensitivity or indifference to notable writing by some of the finest contemporary Filipino writers in English, I am writing this much belated introduction to Connecting Flights: Filipinos Write from Elsewhere (Anvil Publishing, 182 pages), an anthology of essays, fiction, and verse edited by Filipino journalist and writer Ruel S. de Vera. I must admit that I had completely overlooked the book all through the past 10 months or so, my nose having been so close to the grindstone minding my own writing and editing jobs and seminar engagements and, of course, putting together this Forum’s weekly updates. In fact, although I visit my favorite Metro Manila bookstores often enough, it was only after my wife and I took connecting flights of our own—from  Honolulu and back for a five-day stay in the United States for our only daughter’s wedding in Monterey, California, in early October of 2010—that Connecting Flights finally connected and caught my eye from the shelves of one of the local bookstores. (This, perhaps, is as much a measure of the extent of my personal distractedness as of the dearth of marketing efforts and media exposure for locally produced literary works in the Philippines in contrast to those for foreign titles.)

Says de Vera in his introduction to the anthology: “I am honored to be able to invite passengers whom I admire and hold genuine affection for. Connecting Flights boasts of a manifest with some of my favorite writer friends, each checking in with poem, fiction or essay carried forward with the greatest velocity. These are the passengers I want to be with when embarking on a trip that is to change everything, regardless of destination and duration.”

Three of the contributors to Connecting Flights are friends or acquaintances of mine, namely Butch Dalisay Jr. and Krip Yuson, both of whom are Hall of Famers of the Palanca Awards for Literature, and Manolo Quezon, previously with the Philippine Daily Inquirer but now working in the Communications Office of the Office of the Philippine President. Thus, specific words of praise for their featured essays coming from me might sound biased, and those for the works of the 17 other contributors might unjustifiably pale or shine more brightly in comparison.* Either way might just get me into a tight fix with any of these highly talented writers. I have therefore decided to just provide a link to a well-thought-out review of Connecting Flights by the blogger Sumthinblue who, in a web posting last January 7, 2010, rated the collection “excellent” and “a great book for people who love travel, whether they’re jetting off in planes or in their imagination.”   

I wholeheartedly agree with her ratings for Connecting Flights on both counts.

The 20 contributors to Connecting Flights are as follows (in alphabetical order): Dean Francis Alfar, Jose Dalisay Jr., Lourd De Veyra, Karla P. Delgado, Rosario A. Garcellano, Ramil Digal Gulle, Christina Pantoja-Hidalgo, Alya B. Honasan, Marne L. Kilates, Angelo R. Lacuesta, Ambeth R. Ocampo, Charlson Ong, Manuel L. Quezon III, D.M. Reyes, Sev Sarmenta, Alice M. Sun-Cua, Yvette Tan, Joel M. Toledo, Alfred A. Yuson, and Jessica Zafra.

Read Sumthinblue’s review of Connecting Flights in the Bookmarked! website now!

ABOUT THE BOOK’S EDITOR:

Ruel S. de Vera writes for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and is associate editor of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine. He holds a Master’s in Journalism from the Ateneo de Manila University and teaches at its department of communication. A literary writer and book editor, he has received the Palanca Award for Literature, the Philippines Free Press Literary Award, and the Catholic Mass Media Award.

Distinguishing direct speech from indirect or reported speech

What constitutes a dependent clause in reported speech - 1 

A Masteral student in Myanmar doing comparative research on the four types of sentences in English—namely simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex—asked for help in early December [2020] on how to distinguish direct speech from indirect or reported speech, and how to explain what constitutes a dependent clause in reported speech.

Paraphrasing what AungMyo said: “Our teacher said that the direct-speech statement ‘I was hungry’ becomes the dependent clause in reported speech, but in my research I need to explain precisely why and how ‘I was hungry’ becomes that dependent clause.”

Let me begin by saying that direct statements like “I was hungry” are simple and straightforward, but it gets more complicated when we report that someone else has uttered that statement. Perhaps we can’t remember the exact words said or just want to summarize them, just focus on the salient points, or perhaps improve the grammar of what was said. When we do these things, we enter the realm of what’s called 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 subject noun or pronoun in the quoted statement need to be changed.

Consider that the directly quoted statement “I am hungry” was said by your close friend Dewi Thant Z.

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

“My close friend Dewi Thant says she is hungry.” 

(You say this to someone beside you just right after Dewi said “I am hungry.”)

In the present perfect tense:

“My close friend Dewi Thant has said (that) she is hungry.” 

(You say this to someone beside you perhaps several minutes after Dewi said it.”

And in the future tense:

“My close friend Dewi Thant will say (that) she is hungry.” 

(In anticipation, you can tell this to someone through your mobile phone several minutes before actually Dewi says it.)

In all three of the reporting tenses above, the only grammatically significant change in the reported statement is the replacement of the personal pronoun “I” with “My close friend Dewi Thant.” Of course, the conjunction “that” is used to introduce the reported statement, making it take the form of a dependent clause in reported speech.

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 constructions of the simple present tense, present perfect tense, and future tense renditions: 

“My close friend Dewi Thant says she is hungry.” 

“My close friend Dewi Thant has said she is hungry.” 

“My close friend Dewi Thant will say she is hungry.”

But things in reported speech become more iffy when the reporting verb is in the past tense. Take this direct quote from a Philippine official about a Somalia ship-piracy issue some years back: 

“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 reporting verb is in the simple past tense, the operative verb in the quoted statement—the dependent clause—generally moves one tense backwards in reported speech. However, that rule applies only when the action in the reported statement is a consummated and not a repeated or habitual one.

This article appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the December 17, 2020 Internet edition of The Manila Times,© 2020 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

What constitutes a dependent clause in reported speech - 2

In last week’s column, I pointed out that the general rule in reported speech is to move the operative verb in the directly quoted statement one tense backwards. We also need to change the time and place signifiers in the directly quoted statement to conform to the sense of the reported statement. 

Take this direct quote last week from a health official: 

“This cold season, the public is advised to take even stronger measures to avoid contracting the Covid-19 virus.” 

In reported speech for a news report: 

“The health official said last week that during the cold season, the public should take even stronger measures to avoid contracting the Covid-19 virus.”

            IMAGE CREDIT: ESL.COM AT PINTEREST.COM

What follows are more examples of this conversion from direct speech to reported speech.

Direct quote from a bill collector to a delinquent customer two weeks ago: 

“The company is giving you only until the end of the month to settle your long-overdue account.”  

In reported speech: 

“The bill collector told the delinquent customer two weeks ago that she only had until the end of the month to settle her long-overdue account.”

Direct quote from a manager to a sales supervisor yesterday: 

“See me tomorrow to discuss your monthly sales.” 

Reported speech of what the manager told the sales supervisor today: 

“My manager asked me yesterday to see him today to discuss my monthly sales.”

Direct quote from an irate wife to her husband sometime ago: 

“Tell me what you and that woman were doing at the park yesterday.” 

In reported speech by the wife during a court hearing: 

“Your Honor, I asked my husband what he and that woman were doing at that park that day.”

Direct quote from a newly married woman to a lady friend just hours ago: 

“Gerry and I met last year during a heavy downpour and, well, it was love at first sight.” 

In reported speech by the lady friend to a common acquaintance of theirs: 

“Cynthia told me that she and Gerry met the year before during a heavy downpour and it was love at first sight.”

Apart from the time signifiers, we also need to routinely change such place and pointing signifiers as “here,” “there,” and “that” in directly quoted statements to accurately reflect the sense of the reported statement. 

Direct quote from a police officer to a car driver:

“You drove against the red light at the  intersection there on Rizal Avenue corner Recto Avenue.” 

Reported speech by the arrested car driver at the police station: 

“The arrested driver denied the traffic enforcer’s claim that he had driven against the red light in that intersection at that time.” 

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

Direct quote from a friend: 

“I may go to New York next month.” 

Reported speech: 

“My friend said he might go to New York next month.”

Direct quote from the general manager: 

“The staff will leave only upon my instructions.” 

Reported speech by a supervisor to his subordinates: 

“The general manager made it clear that the staff should leave only upon his instructions.”

Direct quote from the company’s chief operating officer:  

“All projects must be finished by yearend.” 

Reported speech by the company president to division managers about the CEO’s directive: 

“Our CEO directed us that all projects have to be finished by yearend.”

With this, we are done with our quick review of reported speech.

This article, 2,025th  of the series, earlier appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the December 24, 2020 Internet edition of  The Manila Times,© 2020 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

A unified approach to the use of punctuation in English

Part II:
THE PARENTHETICALS AND THEIR USES

A. The parenthesis and its uses 

We are all familiar with the two curved marks that we know as the parenthesis ( ), but what some of us may not know is that in English grammar, the parenthesis is actually any amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence that’s set off from a sentence or passage by some form of punctuation. That punctuation can be those two curved marks, of course, but depending on the importance of the inserted information and the writer’s intention, it can also be a pair of enclosing commas or a pair of enclosing dashes.

Let’s take a look at the following forms of the parenthesis along with examples of each

(1) Parenthesis by comma: (a) “Ferdinand Magellan, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” (b) “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

(2) Parenthesis by dashes: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill—they said they didn’t know it then—but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.”

(3) Parenthesis by parentheses: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan (the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled) busted one of its pistons.”

In each of the three examples above, the information set off by the punctuation marks—whether by commas, dashes, or parentheses—is called a parenthetical, and its distinguishing characteristic is that the sentence remains grammatically correct even without it. A parenthetical is basically added information; however, it isn’t necessarily optional or semantically expendable. It may be needed to put the statement in a desired context, to establish the logic of the sentence, or to convey a particular tone or mood for the statement. In fact, the punctuation chosen for a parenthetical largely determines its optionality or importance to the statement.

So the big question about parentheticals is really this: Under what circumstances do we use commas, dashes, or parentheses to punctuate or set off a parenthetical from a sentence?

THE PARENTHESIS BY COMMA

In Example 1(a) above, the parenthetical “who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521” is what’s known as a nonrestrictive relative clause. A nonrestrictive relative clause is a parenthetical that provides information that’s not absolutely needed to understand the sentence; in other words, it is nondefining information. The sentence will thus remain grammatically and semantically intact without it: “Ferdinand Magellan was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” Without the nonrestrictive relative clause, however, the sentence loses a lot of valuable information about its subject, “Ferdinand Magellan”; in fact, the intended context for the statement disappears completely.

For such type of parenthetical, the most appropriate choice of punctuation is a pair of enclosing commas, as was used in the original sentence. It won’t do to punctuate a nonrestrictive relative clause with dashes or parentheses, for either of them would render the information optional, as we can see in these two versions of that sentence:

“Ferdinand Magellan—who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521—was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

“Ferdinand Magellan (who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521) was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

Both of these sentence constructions run counter to the writer’s original intention.

We must keep in mind, though, that the same parenthetical—“who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521”—would have become a restrictive relative clause had the subject been a generic noun like, say, “the explorer,” in which case the pair of enclosing commas would have been rendered unnecessary: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The absence of the enclosing commas indicates that the nonrestrictive relative clause has become a restrictive one.

Obviously, the following questions will come to mind when that happens: Why not leave those enclosing commas alone? What difference does it make if we let those commas stay even after changing “Ferdinand Magellan” to “the explorer”?

The reason lies in the basic grammatical difference between a proper noun and a generic noun. We will recall that a proper noun is one that designates a particular being or thing, and that as a rule in English, a proper noun is capitalized to indicate this fact. A proper noun, moreover, has this important characteristic: it generally won’t accept a limiting or restrictive relative modifier to define it. By its very name, a proper noun is supposed to have already defined itself, making it one of a kind.

Now, we need to recall at this point that a relative clause or a “who”-parenthetical that comes after a proper noun—“Ferdinand Magellan” in this case—becomes a restrictive clause or limiting modifier when it’s not enclosed by a pair of commas. It is therefore grammatically incorrect for the subject “Ferdinand Magellan” to be followed by a relative clause that’s not enclosed by commas, as in this erroneous construction: “Ferdinand Magellan who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” Indeed, the parenthetical “who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521” will always need the pair of enclosing commas in such cases.

It’s an altogether different thing when we replace a proper noun with a generic noun in such sentence constructions. We will then have two grammatical choices. If our intention is to, say, make “the explorer” specifically refer to “Ferdinand Magellan” and to no other person, then we need to modify it with a restrictive relative clause—one without the enclosing commas, as was done previously: “The explorer who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521 was actually a Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.”

On the other hand, if by “the explorer” we mean any explorer at all who had claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown, we would need to modify that generic noun with a nonrestrictive clause or nonlimiting modifier instead: “The explorer, who claimed the Philippine islands for the Spanish crown in 1521, was not the same Portuguese whose native name was Fernão Magalhães.” The enclosing commas—along with the mandatory conversion of the predicate of the sentence into a negative form—indicate that the person referred to isn’t unique but one of a number who made the claim; he could not have been the same Ferdinand Magellan referred to in the sentence with the restrictive relative clause.

Now let’s evaluate the second sentence that I gave earlier as an example of parenthesis by comma: “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” Here, the parenthetical “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” is what is known as the appositive phrase. It is a statement that serves to explain or identify the noun or pronoun that comes before or after it.

The appositive phrase is an extremely useful grammatical device for giving context and texture to what otherwise might be very bland or uninformative sentences.

THE APPOSITIVE PHRASE

We will now discuss the appositive phrase found in the following sentence that I presented for evaluation earlier towards the end of Part I: “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” The appositive phrase here is, of course, the parenthetical “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later.” It’s an added statement that gives context and texture to this vague, bare-bones sentence: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

On closer scrutiny, we will find that the appositive phrase is actually a simplified form of the nonrestrictive relative clause in this sentence: “Cleopatra, who was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” It is, in fact, originally the relative clause “who was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” but with both the relative pronoun “who” and the linking verb “was” taken out.

That grammatical streamlining process produces a modifier in noun form—“the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later”—that is in apposition or equivalent to the noun form it modifies—“Cleopatra.” Indeed, appositive phrases are a compact and concise way of describing people, places, and things or of qualifying ideas within the same sentence. They allow us to provide more details about a subject without having to start another sentence—a process that sometimes undesirably slows down the pace of an unfolding exposition or narrative.

The use of appositive phrases, we now will probably recall, is also one of the most efficient ways of combining sentences. It allows a related statement from another sentence to be folded into the sentence that precedes it. The sentence that we are evaluating now, for instance, has combined these two sentences: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire. She was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later.” By making the statement in the second sentence an appositive in the first, we get a sentence that’s richer in texture and more interesting to read: “Cleopatra, the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later, greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.”

Such constructions also have the added virtue of allowing us to develop the basic statement of a sentence unimpeded. Assume that we have already written this basic statement: “Cleopatra greatly influenced the affairs of the Roman Empire.” If we use the appositive phrase “the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” to form a new sentence after it, that new sentence would often become a stumbling block to developing the basic statement. Indeed, with a powerful statement like “She was the legendary queen of Egypt from 51 B.C. until her suicide by asp bite 21 years later” getting in the way, it won’t be an easy task to go back to the thread of our basic statement and develop it. In contrast, folding that powerful statement into an appositive phrase in the first sentence neatly sidesteps the potential continuity problem while making that first sentence much more readable and interesting.

The appositive phrase we have discussed above is of the nonrestrictive type, which means that it isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence even if it adds important additional information to it. Nonrestrictive appositive phrases are parentheticals that, like nonrestrictive relative clauses, need a pair of enclosing commas to set them off from the sentence.

But some appositive phrases are of the restrictive type and they don’t need those commas. An example of the restrictive appositive phrase is the phrase “Pliny the Elder” in this sentence: “The Roman scholar and encyclopedist Pliny the Elder distinguished himself as a cavalry commander in Germany and later served as a well-respected procurator in Gaul, Africa, and Spain.”

We must keep in mind, though, that restrictive appositive phrases rarely get much longer than the three-word example—“Pliny the Elder”—that's given above. This is because long, extended phrases generally don’t function well as restrictive appositives; without the enclosing commas that set off nonrestrictive appositive phrases from a sentence, extended phrases used as restrictive appositives tend to make sentences convoluted and difficult to grasp.

Try reading this sentence, for instance: “The 1965 film Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines is about a wacky cross-channel air race that dangled £10,000 in prize money to bring flyers from all over the world.” The restrictive appositive phrase here is the seven-word movie title “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines,” which, if it weren’t italicized or placed within quotes in the sentence, would have made that sentence so difficult to grasp.    

Indeed, what we will encounter more often is the restrictive appositive, which identifies a person, place, or thing more closely by name in just, say, one to three words, like “Regina” and “Jennifer” in this sentence: “My brother-in-law’s sister Regina gave birth to a boy as their sister Jennifer was driving her to the hospital.”

Here, the appositives “Regina” and “Jennifer” aren’t set off by commas because both are restrictive—they can’t be omitted from the sentence without affecting its basic meaning. They serve to make it clear that the speaker’s brother-in-law has at least two sisters—the one who gave birth and the other who drove her to the hospital. Without those restrictive appositives, in fact, the sentence becomes incoherent: “My brother-in-law’s sister gave birth to a boy as their sister was driving her to the hospital.”

But this question will obviously linger in our minds: What if we supply the enclosing commas and make those two appositives nonrestrictive instead, as in this construction: “My brother-in-law’s sister, Regina, gave birth to a boy as their sister, Jennifer, was driving her to the hospital”? The answer, as I will now explain, is a categorical “no.”

In its nonrestrictive form (with the enclosing commas), the appositive “Regina” implies that the speaker’s brother-in-law has only one sister whose name happens to be Regina. However, the other nonrestrictive appositive, “Jennifer,” also implies that both the speaker’s brother-in-law and his sister Regina have only one sister whose name happens to be Jennifer.

This, of course, contradicts the earlier implication that the speaker’s brother-in-law has only one sister, Regina. Indeed, he has at least two sisters, Regina and Jennifer. This is why it isn’t advisable to put what should logically be a restrictive appositive into a nonrestrictive form, for these two forms are neither grammatically and semantically equivalent nor interchangeable.

Even if there’s no possibility of an identity mix-up, the restrictive appositive form is often preferable to the nonrestrictive form if the appositive and the word it identifies are so closely related, as in this example: “Her husband Alfredo is trying his luck as an overseas foreign worker.” Here, it can be argued that commas should set off “Alfredo” because this name isn’t essential to the meaning of the sentence, thus making it a nonrestrictive appositive. However, the nouns “her husband” and “Alfredo” are so closely related that they can logically be considered a single noun phrase, “her husband Alfredo.” The commas then become superfluous, making “Alfredo” a restrictive appositive.

THE PARENTHESIS BY DASHES AND THE PARENTHESIS BY PARENTHESES

We already know that a parenthesis or parenthetical is basically added information whose distinguishing characteristic is that the sentence remains grammatically correct even without it. So far, however, we have taken up only its first two types—the nonrestrictive relative clause and the nonrestrictive appositive phrase, both of which require enclosing commas to set them off from the sentence. We have also taken up the restrictive relative clause and the restrictive appositive phrase, but we have seen that they aren’t really true parentheticals because they aren’t expendable—we don’t really have the option to drop them from the sentence.

This time we’ll take up the two other kinds of parentheticals: the parenthesis by dashes, and the parenthesis by parentheses. They differ from the parenthesis by comma in that neither of them can be punctuated properly and adequately by a pair of enclosing commas. In their case, though, the use of dashes or parentheses is generally interchangeable and is often a matter of stylistic choice. This choice largely depends on whether the parenthetical is really optional—perhaps simply an aside—or contextually necessary; in any case, however, using enclosing commas to set it off is out of the question.

Parenthesis by dashes. This kind of parenthetical normally folds another sentence into a sentence, as in this example: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill—they said they didn’t know it then—but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” What sets off the parenthetical from the main sentence is a pair of double dashes, which indicates a much stronger break in the thought or structure of the sentence than what a pair of enclosing commas can provide.

See what happens when we use commas instead to punctuate that kind of parenthetical: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill, they said they didn’t know it then, but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” The pauses provided by the two commas are much too brief to indicate the sudden shift from the major developing thought to the subordinate idea.

If the writer so chooses, however, parentheses may also be used for that same parenthetical: “Their kindly uncle was terminally ill (they said they didn’t know it then) but his nephews and nieces just went on their merry ways.” Note, though, that when parentheses are used, the implication is that the writer doesn’t attach as much importance to the qualifying idea as he would when he uses double dashes instead.

Parenthesis by parentheses. This is the preferred punctuation when the writer wants to convey to the reader that the idea in the parenthetical isn’t really crucial to his exposition, as in this example: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan (the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled) busted one of its pistons.” However, if the writer intends to take up the dealer’s apparently false assurance in some detail later in the exposition, the parenthesis by dashes would be a good foreshadowing device: “While I was driving it out of the used-car dealer’s yard, the nicely refurbished 1994 sedan—the dealer assured me its engine had just been overhauled—busted one of its pistons.”

Parentheticals enclosed by parentheses need not be complete sentences, of course. They can be simple qualifying phrases within or at the tail end of sentences: “Many elective officials (of the dynastic kind, particularly) sometimes forget that they don’t own those positions.” “The disgruntled cashier took the day off (without even filing a leave).”

Even more commonly, parentheses are used to add a fact—maybe a name or a number—that’s subordinate or tangential to the rest of the sentence, as in this example: “Recent geologic research (Alvarez, Alvarez et al, 1980) indicates that the dinosaurs went extinct when an asteroid some 10 km in diameter smashed on present-day Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula some 65 million years ago.”

Now that I’m done discussing the parenthesis by parentheses, I would like to take this opportunity to make a clear distinction between parentheses and brackets in American English. As I’ve earlier discussed, parentheses—sometimes called “round brackets”—are meant to convey to the reader that (1) the idea in the parenthetical isn’t really crucial to the sentence, and that (2) the writer doesn’t attach as much importance to the qualifying idea as he would when he sets them off with double dashes instead.

In contrast, brackets—also known as “square brackets”—are for more specialized uses, particularly for (1) inserting information or authorial comment into direct quotations, (2) inserting translations of quoted statements said in another language, (3) citing errors within quoted statements, and (4) setting off a parenthetical that’s already set off by parentheses in the sentence.

Precisely when is bracket Usage #1 called for? Assume that we are quoting verbatim a passage from Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quijote in reference to Dulcinea, his imagined Empress of La Mancha. Let’s say that the passage uses only pronouns to refer to Dulcinea, and we know that it isn’t permissible to alter exact quotes from a literary work. We then have to use brackets to insert information identifying Dulcinea for our readers: “‘If I were to show her [Dulcinea, his imagined Empress of La Mancha] to you,’ answered Don Quijote, ‘what merit would there be in acknowledging a truth so manifest to all? The important point is that you should believe, confess, affirm, swear, and defend it without setting eyes on her.’”

As for bracket Usage #2, a publication in a particular language, say English, will need brackets to insert translations of quoted statements said in another language, say Tagalog, as in the following passage from a business magazine: “‘Hindi lang kulang, kapos na kapos talaga [It’s been not only short but way, way below our needs],’ she says of the family’s finances.’”

Bracket Usage #3 is called for when we have to cite errors in quoted statements, as in this example: “Our confused physics teacher said, ‘While eating an apple in a bathtub, Isaac Newton [by traditional accounts it was actually Archimedes] shouted “Eureka!” when he discovered the basic principle of hydrostatics.’”

Finally, we may need to take recourse to bracket Usage #4 to set off a parenthetical that’s already set off by parentheses, as in this example: “The life of Marcus Tullius Cicero (who wrote three major philosophical studies [On the Orator, On the Republic, and On the Laws] at a time that he still couldn’t engage in politics) coincided with the decline and fall of the Roman Republic.” Such usage isn’t a pretty sight, but there are times when scholarly exactitude demands it.

(This wraps up my blogspot’s two-part series on the parentheticals and their uses.) 

A unified approach to the use of punctuation in English

Part I: 
INTRODUCTION

As with all the alphabet-based languages, English is primarily dependent on word choices and their combinations for the successful delivery of ideas. In written form, however, English would be so clunky and insufferably confusing without the benefit of punctuation. Whether they are short or long, in fact, what makes sentences and expositions in English eminently readable and understandable is their proper use of punctuation marks—whether the comma, semicolon, colon, dash, parenthesis, or period—to clarify meaning and set off boundaries between structural units of the sentence.

Punctuation marks, of course, usually serve the basic purpose of providing desired pauses and stops within a sentence, as in this sentence from Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.” Here, we have the commas providing short pauses, the semicolons, longer pauses; and the period, a full stop. 

Then here’s a sentence that uses a colon to formally and emphatically introduce something: “This is what he always watched for in his business: the bottom line.” 

And finally, from a short-story by a friend of mine, the late Palanca Awards Hall of Famer Ed Maranan (he passed away on May 8, 2018 at the age of 71), here’s a sentence that uses a pair of dashes to set off a parenthetical remark from the main sentence: “Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift—and yes, pride in his grandpa—was growing by the minute.” 

About the matter of punctuating parentheticals, let me first share with you a very enlightening e-mail conversation I had with Ed about their uses in that sentence of his. 

Retrospective: A grammar conversation on parenthetical usage

What’s the proper punctuation mark to use for parentheticals? Quite often a pair of commas will do, but there are grammatical situations where commas simply prove inadequate to the task, resulting in structurally flawed sentences with a subject-verb disagreement error or a dangling or misplaced modifier.

My conversation with Ed Maranan in the year 2010 went as follows:: 

Ed: Joe, here’s a line from one of my children’s stories:

“Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift—and yes, pride in his grandpa—were growing by the minute.”

Am I right in seeing more than one subject in the subordinate clause which calls for a plural form verb, or does the word “interest” subsume the rest of the clause and thus call for a singular verb?

Me: The operative subject in the subordinate clause is definitely the singular noun “interest.” The subject “pride” in the parenthetical “and yes, pride in his grandpa” doesn’t compound the operative subject (a parenthetical being an optional grammatical element), so “interest” is the only operative subject in that subordinate clause. We therefore have a subject-verb disagreement error here because the sentence uses the plural verb “were” for the singular noun “interest.”

Ed: Aha, but if I were to construct the sentence in this manner:

“Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift and yes, pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute.”

...would the sentence with the plural “were” now be correct?

Me: Yes, definitely! It would greatly clarify matters, though, if the word “yes” is preceded by a comma to make it a full-fledged interruptive. Otherwise, some readers might misconstrue the whole clause “pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute” itself to be the interruptive.

Ed: Just a follow-up. Look at these two constructions:

1. “Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift and, yes, pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute.”

2. “Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift and yes, pride in his grandpa, were growing by the minute.”

The first is your suggested placement of the comma—before “yes.” What if the comma were placed after grandpa? And here’s still another possible construction:

3. “Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift and, yes, pride in his grandpa, were growing by the minute.”

Three commas in all. Would this not more fully solve the problem of ambiguity and observe the rule of agreement? You said that without the comma before “yes,” readers might misconstrue “(and yes,) pride in his grandpa were growing by the minute” as the interruptive, with a faulty agreement, but this would not be the case because “whose interest in his little birthday gift” would then be a lost, dangling paraphrase without a verb, would it not?

Me: I think the use of more commas to resolve the ambiguity in that construction just adds more grammatical and structural wrinkles to the sentence. In Sentence #2, in particular, putting a comma after “grandpa” detaches the interruptive “yes, pride in his grandpa” from the main sentence and makes the plural verb form “were growing” erroneous.

Sentence #3 is better than Sentence #2 in that it provides a comma before “yes,” thus making it a full-fledged interruptive separate from the parenthetical “pride in his grandpa.” However, both sentences suffer from the same subject-verb disagreement error.

We can make that error disappear by simply using a pair of dashes instead of commas to set off the parenthetical from the rest of the sentence:

“Those words seemed to have an effect on the boy, whose interest in his little birthday gift—and, yes, pride in his grandpa—was growing by the minute.”

Here, the pair of dashes provides a much stronger break in the thought and structure of the sentence and this prevents the parenthetical from messing up the sentence grammatically.

(This ended our conversation.)

So precisely what is a parenthetical?

For those encountering the term for the first time, a parenthetical is any amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence that’s set off from a sentence by some form of punctuation. Its distinguishing characteristic is that the sentence remains grammatically correct even without it, but it isn’t necessarily optional or semantically expendable. It may be needed to put the statement in a desired context, to establish the logic of the sentence, or to convey a particular tone or mood for the statement. Whether it’s optional or necessary largely depends on the kind of punctuation chosen for it.

This brings us to the big question regarding these punctuation marks: Precisely when do we use each of them in our sentences and expositions? And in particular, which of the punctuation marks do we use to set off a parenthetical—by definition, any inserted amplifying or explanatory word, phrase, or sentence—from a main sentence?

Next:    Part II - The parenthesis and its uses       September 28, 2023

Third updated edition of “English Plain and Simple” now off the press

September 14, 2023—Now off the press this week is the third updated edition of Jose Carillo’s best-selling book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language. Hailed by leading academicians, journalists, and critics upon its release in 2005 as “a charmer of a book that delights as well as instructs,” it won the National Book Award for linguistics from the Manila Critics Circle that same year.

The Manila Times Publishing Corp. announced this week that the new edition of the 500-page book is now being distributed to major bookstores nationwide, with copies also made available for direct volume deliveries to institutional and corporate buyers and interested individual distributors.

English Plain and Simple brings together the author’s first collection of grammar lessons and advice that originally appeared in his long-running Manila Times column that started coming out six days a week in 2002. Two more volumes drawing material from his Manila Times columns followed, namely The 10 Most Annoying English Grammar Errors (2008) and Give Your English the Winning Edge (2009).

The third  revised edition of English Plain and Simple is now available this week and a new edition of Give Your English the Winning Edge is scheduled for release this coming October 

In his foreword to English Plain and Simple, Dr. Jose Y. Dalisay, Ph.D, professor emeritus of English at the University of the Philippines and Hall of Famer of the Carlos Palanca Awards for Literature, says: “There are many guides to English that the avid student can pick up, but quite a few, I think, actually do more harm than good as ponderous rulebooks meant for rote memorization. But every now and then comes a charmer of a book that delights as well as it instructs. English Plain and Simple is one such gem, for which we have the pseudonymous Mr. Carillo to thank. Whether he was walking me through the hierarchy of adjectives or discovering Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carillo never failed to show me something new and cause me to smile in recognition of a shared experience.”

In the latest edition of English Plain and Simple, the author finally reveals his identity after over 20 years of using Jose Carillo as pen name and explains why he used it. He is the veteran newspaper journalist and communications executive Carlos O. Llorin Jr., a former college newspaper editor-in-chief (the weekly Dawn, University of the East), marketing field researcher (Asia Research Inc.), national newspaper reporter (Philippines Herald), and ad agency public relations manager (J. Romero & Associates). He worked for San Miguel Corporation for 18 years as editorial services head, audio-visual group head, senior communications assistant, and product manager, then as corporate communications manager for rhe company's Magnolia Divison with the rank of assistant vice president. 

He won nine major Philippine industry awards as editor in chief of the company’s monthly magazine Kaunlaran and fortnightly newsletter. As executive director of San Miguel’s Magnolia Youth Achievement Awards, he won a Gold Quill Award from the U.S.-based International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) in 1989 and the Golden World Award from the U.K.-based International Public Relations Association (IPRA) in 1990.

Llorin took optional early retirement as assistant vice president for communications of San Miguel’s Magnolia Division in 1993, later running the English-language services company Asia Herald Inc. as general manager for five years until 2007. Currently, aside from writing his weekly column in The Manila Times, he is an independent writer and book editor as well as editing and communication consultant for corporate, institutional, and individual clients.

Describing the rationale for writing his three English-usage books, Carlos Llorin Jr. says: “As with my weekly columns in the Manila Times, they aim to help nonnative English speakers improve their written English without having to go back to the classroom and, frankly, also to make Filipinos keenly aware that if their English is bad, it’s largely due to the Philippine culture’s fervid addiction to legalese. This done, his English-usage books then gently walk the reader through the basic and practical and later the finer aspects of English grammar and semantics, revisiting all of the parts of speech and their rudiments—from nouns and pronouns to adjectives and adverbs, from the comma and period to the paragraph and double-dash.” The emphasis is to train themselves to think, speak, and write in clear and simple English. (Read the related feature article below about the author's rationale for writing his English-usage books, “The problem with our English according to Jose Carillo.”)

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STRANGE, CONVOLUTED, STILTED LANGUAGE
The problem with our English according to Jose Carillo

When Jose Carillo’s English-language services company ran a want ad for editors sometime in 2003, close to 100 applicants applied by e-mail. Practically all of them had at least an AB degree in English, mass communication, or the social sciences; three were magna cum laudes and six cum laudes; and 10 even had Master’s degrees. Disconcertingly, however, most of their job application letters were worded and constructed in unbelievably strange, convoluted, stilted English like the one below that's reproduced here verbatim:

“Dear Sir/Madam:

“Greetings in Peace!

“Responding with utmost immediacy to your job opportunity ad published on January 6, ____ in the __________, I wish to  inform you of my fervor interest in applying for the position of Editor. I am an AB graduate of the University of ______ with distinct recognition as a leader and achiever in the field of debating and as editor-in-chief of the student publication, journals, and other newsletters of the academe.

[The applicant then gives a glowing three-paragraph work experience description.]

“For your evaluation, I am enclosing my résumé as an attachment as a first step in exploring the possibilities of employment in your client’s organization. I would appreciate hearing from you soon.

“Thank you for your consideration and God Bless.”

In his book English Plain and Simple whose third revised edition was released this week, Jose Carillo says the English of such job application letters is obviously not the English to use when you want to present yourself in the most favorable way to a prospective employer. 

He says: “The truth is that many of us who write in English distrust our own ability to present ourselves in a good light. No matter how educated or experienced we are, we often instinctively assume the persona and voice of someone else when we sit down to write. We take refuge in some pseudo-legal mumbo-jumbo that we think will impress our reader or listener. 

“And once we get started in this legal-sounding language, we get snared and become addicted to it. Instead of writing as we would talk, we habitually grasp at these arcane words and phrases in the mistaken belief that like some mantra, they will miraculously make things happen for us.”

Jose Carillo likewise observes that the English of not a few of the country's Ph.Ds with a “publish or perish” mindset often verges on gibberish—long, pompous, confused, and empty—like this hardly comprehensible official report, published verbatim in a daily newspaper, by an education official writing on Philippine education indicators:

“Teachers’ skills, training, development and welfare with __ percent of the sample attest to their importance in validating the significant effect of teachers’ welfare on the students. Skills training, welfare and development translated into further studies, seminars and benefits are the determinants of Friday sickness (in cases of teachers posted in far-flung barrios, where teachers will usually miss Friday classes, indicative of their dedication to the learning process of their ward) and the gruesome test of dedication and commitment.”

Carillo’s bestselling book English and Simple, which won the National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle upon its publication in 2005, makes every effort to address this very serious and embarrassing communication inadequacy. It provides systematic but easy-to-follow instructions in English writing that students and teachers alike need to continually develop so they can  communicate their thoughts and ideas clearly, simply, and confidently to particular audiences.

The Third Updated Edition of English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today's Global Language, 500 pages, paperback cover and 40 lbs bookpaper inside pages, Php 699.00 per copy, was released in mid-September 2023 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. Copyright 2004 by Jose A. Carillo, author. Copyright 2008, 2023 by Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Printed in the Philippines.