Saying ‘build a building’ is okay, but it’s kind of repetitive, isn’t it?
In our last edition, we pledged that in subsequent columns, we’d dedicate our introductory paragraphs to addressing our scribblers’ challenges in punctuation.
Today we’ll talk about the full stop, otherwise referred to as the period. This is the mark that comes after the end of a sentence. This sounds too simple, doesn’t it?
Yes, it does, yet it’s not uncommon to come across a text in which a scribbler, upon reaching the end of a sentence, puts a comma instead of a full stop, then begins a new one!
There’re also cases in which a scribbler completes a sentence, puts a full stop instead of a comma, then proceeds to write a new sentence that’s incomplete in itself!
This kind of goofing is committed in a story that appears on Page 3 of the tabloid closely associated with this columnist, entitled, ‘Over 240 women face food insecurity in 2050…’ Our colleague writes: “Only about three percent of climate change-related development finance is placing gender equality as a principal objective globally. IT has been observed in Arusha.”
There ought to have a comma between “globally” and” it,” not a full stop! Why, the latter sentence is actually a dependent clause—an expression that doesn’t make sense as a sentence!
A goof of the same nature occurs in the last-para-but-one, whereby the scribbler begins a fresh sentence with the words “Especially because…” while the preceding sentence ended with a full stop.
Clearly, some of us need to go to back to the grammatical drawing board to fully grasp what it means by a sentence and sentence types.
Having thus lectured (bah!), let’s now proceed with our key task of sharing linguistic gems picked up over the week. Here we go…
On Page 18 of the tabloid closely associated with this columnist (Friday, September 6), there’s a story entitled, ‘Sh26.17 billion boost Udom with new buildings.’ The intro reads: “The University of Dodoma has signed a Sh27.17 billion contract with local developers to BUILD two new BUILDINGS…”
There’s echoing here, which renders the sentence monotonous, boring! This is a mess the scribbler could’ve eliminated by killing one “build.” Let’s do a rewrite for him: “The University of Dodoma has signed a Sh27.17 billion contract with local developers to CONSTRUCT (not to build) two new BUILDINGS…”
Finally, we’ll have a couple of gems from Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet, Page 1 of which has a story whose headline reads: ‘Factories need in-built sewage, wastewater load storage, CYCLING.’
Hello! In matters of taking care of the environment, we don’t talk of cycling materials; we talk of RECYCLING them. It’s the same thing as saying, “reusing” materials—smartly.
The blurb for this story depicts echoing like the one we note above. Let’s look at it: “Factory workers also need to have PROTECTIVE gear to PROTECT them from inadvertent contact or odours of collected wastes to PROTECT their health.”
The above sentence is fine, linguistically and—if you like—grammatically. However, the echoing emanating from the root word “protect,” which appears thrice, smacks of intellectual laziness on the part of the storyteller! We’ll redeem the sentence thus: “Factory workers also need to have PROTECTIVE gear to KEEP THEM SAFE from inadvertent contact or odours of collected wastes to SAFEGUARD their health.” See? Only one “protect” remains in our rewrite, but the message is exactly the same.
In Para 2 of the story, the scribbler writes the following: “Dr Ashatu Kishaji, the Union and Environment “state minister” in the Vice President’s Office made this appeal yesterday…”
Hang on! Official ministerial titles are fixed, which means, we err when we redo them to suit our fancy. It means Dr Kishaji’s designation needs to rewritten thus: “Minister of State (not state minister) in the Vice President’s Office…”
Oh, this treacherous language called English!
