Yesteryears? No; we simply say, ‘yesteryear’

We look at diction again, for the work of a scribbler isn’t just about grammatical competence, it’s also about vocabulary competence. As The Readers Digest vocabulary column name says: ‘It pays to enrich your word power’.

If you’re constrained in this score, you often end up passing otherwise correct information using the wrong word and with that, you’re cooked! You might even invite a costly libel case for your editor… unwittingly, but do lawyers care?

That’s enough lecturing, so let’s look at linguistic gems gathered over the past week. First, there was this story that featured in Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet of Monday, Sept 15, entitled “Siblings locked in dirty room for 10 months”.

Says the scribbler in the intro: “Four children from the same family, aged between nine and four, were locked in a filthy room by their father for TEN months…. The GRISLY incident was revealed by a social worker, Penina Mbwete...”

GRISLY? We’ve our reservation with this adjective, for according to our dictionary, it means, “extremely unpleasant, (especially) because death and blood is involved.”

We say the murder was grisly when, for instance, the deceased was slaughtered like an animal. In car crashes that happen so regularly in Bongo these days, many passengers suffer grisly death.

How about INCIDENT? When a situation takes a whole TEN months, as the story says, that isn’t an incident; it is just that, a SITUATION. An incident is instant, a one-off thing. It is not continuous.

The scribbler narrate further in Para 3: “According to Ms Mbwete, the chilling INCIDENT occurred RECENTLY at Sunuka Village …”

Oh my! The children were locked up for 10 months; now how does “recentness” come in? Or may be the scribbler wanted to say the children were DISCOVERED recently? And then, how can the discovering be chilling (frightening – cha kutisha!)?

Then on Wednesday, Sept. 17, the tabloid that’s close to this columnist had a story on Page 6 entitled, “Journos urged to adhere to ethics….”

Purporting to report what the MCT executive secretary Kajubi Mukajanga told journalists, our scribbling colleague writes:

“He said MCT deemed it necessary to train journalists on how they could defend themselves against any MALICIOUS attack by dishonest people given their tough task of exposing people’s malpractice.”

A reader who sent us with this one wonders if the “attack” needed to be qualified by “malicious”, since, he says, we cannot have “FRIENDLY attack”. Well, well… he has a point, we think. He also notes that using the word “people” twice in the sentence should have been avoided. We agree.

Why, our colleague could have simply said “exposing malpractice.”

On Sept. 14, the Sunday tabloid edition of Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet had a story thus headlined, “Key players doubt plans to abolish school fees,” in which the intro went thus: “As the government plans to scrap OFF school fees in public school, stakeholders say the move might hit a snag.”

No, please! We don’t scrap off things that we don’t want; we simply SCRAP them. And again here, using the word “school” is, as we keep admonishing, should have been avoided. Being repetitive makes readers construe us as intellectually lazy!

The scribbler further writes in reference to one Mr Luande Joel, a school administrator: “He said his school spends Sh20 million for mocks, national exams and Form 4 and 6 alone for allowances and COSTS of STATIONERIES.”

What? Stationeries? Nope! We simply say STATIONERY (an uncountable noun).

And from the huge tabloid from Nairobi which commands a sizeable readership in Dar, there was a story on a Kenyan couple living in Australia, entitled, “Arunga son was killed over demons”. Says the scribbler in Para 2: “The Brisbane Magistrate’s Court granted Ms Arunga bail under strict conditions, AFTER BEING CHARGED WITH BEING AN ACCESORY to the murder…”

Oops! It’s like the COURT was charged with murder. This is mix-up common with our scribblers, especially the caption handlers We often read things like “Police officer takes down a statement from a driver after knocking down a pedestrian” instead of “… from a driver who had knocked down a pedestrian.”

In the case here, the Nairobi scribbler surely meant to say: “The Brisbane Magistrate’s Court granted Ms Arunga bail under strict conditions, AFTER CHARGING HER with…”

Finally, something from the Sunday tabloid that’s close to this columnist (Sept. 14), thanks to an article with the headline: Damn rats, they have ruined my interview chance…” Says the scribbler in Para 2:

“I still have faint memory of my YESTERYEARS…” No, please! We just say “YESTERYEAR” (uncountable).

Ah, this treacherous language called English!