Man dies as his car gets involved in ‘ON HEAD’ collision with lorry
EMERGENCE SWICH? Nope! We’re certain the management of the building located in Boko, Dar es Salaam, assigned an artist to paint EMERGENCY SWITCH, which refers to a fail-safe mechanism used to immediately shut down machinery during dangerous situations. “Swich” doesn’t exist in the English lexicon! “Emergence” means coming into being or starting to exist. Trust signwriters! PHOTO | HM
Job cuts have made things in newsrooms most difficult, with surviving scribblers mostly left to their own devices—or AI—to sort out goofs we’re all susceptible to. Since it’s hard for one to proofread one’s own work, we should all brace ourselves for harder times ahead.
Scribblers will, now and then, be exposed to ridicule, not because their mastery of English is bad, but because of constrained gate-keeping.
Which is why we’ve to be excused for repeating this perennial advice of ours: Before you hand over your work to the next person in the production chain, read, and read, and read it again.
Having thus lectured (bah!), we’ll now proceed to do what this column is essentially all about, namely, sharing linguistic gems collected over the week. Here we go…
The Thursday, May 21 edition of Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet has a story on Page 3 entitled, ‘RC office photographer killed, 7 injured in Shinyanga road crash.’
Now, in Para 5, the scribbler writes: “According to the police commander…the accident was caused by negligence on the part of the Toyota Harrier driver who was driving from Shinyanga to Tinde at high speed before ON HEAD collision with the press vehicle.”
On head collision? No way! When vehicles crash against each other “face-to-face,” we call that a HEAD-ON collision. Yes; not “on head” collision!
Page 4 is coloured by a photo whose caption reads, “Musoma District Commissioner Juma Chikoka makes remarks at a MEETING of the Musoma Municipal Council MEETING held on Tuesday…”
Using the word “meeting” twice was unnecessary. Let’s offer a rewrite that’ll get rid of one: “…Musoma DC Juma Chikoka makes remarks during a Musoma Municipal Council MEETING held on Tuesday…”
Page 9 is carrying two feature stories, one of which has a headline that reads, ‘Teacher-student relations are decisive in promoting EDUCATIONAL.’
What we’ve on this headline is, we aver, a case of absent-mindedness on the part of the gatekeeper who handled the article. Why? Because it is unlikely he doesn’t know the word “educational” is an adjective, not a noun, which is to say, it can’t end a sentence the way it has. We aver he meant to write, “…promoting EDUCATION.”
Now let’s look at a story appearing on Page 2 of Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet of Saturday, May 23, whose headline reads, ‘National IDs centralised, MPs told.’
In this one, the scribbler, purporting to report on what the Home Affairs minister said, writes the following: “He said this while responding to a basic question by Mtoni MP…who wanted to know when the Government would begin printing national identity cards in Zanzibar SIMILAR to passports to improve accessibility.”
When you say “printing national identity cards in Zanzibar SIMILAR to passports…” is like saying there’s a need to print national IDs in Zanzibar that will look almost exactly like passports.
However, what the MP actually said is that there’s a need to print national IDS in Zanzibar, JUST LIKE authorities are currently printing passports there.
Finally, a look at Page 15 of the esteemed broadsheet. Here, there’s a story entitled, ‘What to expect from TACEC 2026.’
To the uninformed, by the way, TACEC is the acronym for Tanzania Annual Customer Experience event, whose 2026 edition is scheduled to take place on July 3.
In the last-para-but 3, the scribbler writes: “However, the demographic breakdown of the respondents reveals that over…per cent of the respondents were AGED between 18 TO 40 years old (sic!) with males constituting 52 per cent…”
Hello! We don’t say “between this TO that;” we say “between this AND that.”
