English - A fine balance

BALANCE pervades our everyday lives. Commerce is driven by a balance of supply and demand. What if population growth outstrips food supply, as in a Malthusian future? There should at least be a balance, the amount of food produced being always sufficient to feed a growing population.

Demographers foresee problems when the male and female numbers in a population depart significantly from an approximate one-to-one ratio. The prudent running of an organisation depends on a check-and-balance strategy. In the environment, ecological disasters ensue when the balance of nature is upset.

In English, we may also talk about balance — specifically, balanced constructions. Another term for it is parallelism. For good English style, ideas expressing parallel meanings are put in parallel grammatical forms – to make for ease in reading and to provide clarity and rhythm. Parallel elements regularly appear in lists or series, in compound and complex sentences, and in situations involving comparison or contrast (Harbrace College Handbook, 1998).

Let me illustrate with some examples.

Either … or: The word either may be used on its own as a determiner (either door will lead out into the garden) or as a pronoun (either of the books is good reading). However, when two alternatives are specified, the word either is paired with the word or to introduce the first and the second alternatives respectively.

“It is important that either and or are correctly placed so that the structures following each word balance and mirror each other” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2004). Consider the following example: “She either left the book in the hall or in the kitchen”, which is not balanced – the structure following the word either and that following the word or are of different forms. The corrected sentence would read: “She left the book either in the hall or in the kitchen”, or “She left the book in either the hall or the kitchen”.

Neither … nor: When neither (the negative of either) is used in a paired construction, the other member of the pair is nor – NOT or as is sometimes encountered (neither he or she is going to the concert). The same considerations for either … or as noted above apply to neither … nor. It is important in good English style that the words or expressions following these words have the same grammatical form (he could neither smile nor speak – rather than he neither could smile nor speak).

Not only … but also: As with the examples above, the expression following not only and that following but also should have the same grammatical structure (the arowana as a game fish is known not only for its beautiful sheen but also for its fighting quality.) Alternatively, the sentence could be re-constructed thus: the arowana as a game fish is known for not only its beautiful sheen but also its fighting quality – BUT NOT the arowana as a game fish is not only known for its beautiful sheen but also its fighting quality.

Whether … or: Consider the sentence: “He has not decided whether to go to Seremban or to spend his holiday at home.” It follows the “rule” of a balanced construction. Now consider a variation of the sentence: “He has not decided whether to go to Seremban or not (to go to Seremban)” – which is also a balanced construction. How­ever, when the second expression, “or not”, is the negative of the first expression, it is not necessary to provide the “balance”. Thus, it is enough to write: “He has not decided whether to go to Seremban.” (Note, however, that the alternative expression, “or not”, is retained for emphasis when the sentence begins with the subordinate clause: “Whether you like it OR NOT, you have to stay in tonight.”)

Parallel construction: While the above examples balance two entities, parallel constructions entail the balancing of more than two entities. Consider the sentence: “To be considered good at a language, a person must be proficient in all the four skill areas – speaking, listening, reading, and writing.” The sentence if changed to “… the four skill areas – speech, listening, reading, and writing” still conveys the same sense but is now not balanced – the word speech is out of place among the gerunds listening, reading, and writing.

I have another example – a notice from a local newspaper – pertaining to the requirements for placing an obituary advertisement. (No, I’m not being morbid. I choose this example as a good one to illustrate my point.) The notice reads as follows: “For the placement of death announcements, the following must be produced: 1. Photo­copy of death certificate. 2. Identity card of person placing the advertisement. 3. All obituary ads must be prepaid. 4. Those placing announcements on behalf of the deceased’s family, an authorisation letter must be produced.”

The said notice is a poor example of parallel construction – Item 1 is a phrase; Item 2 is also a phrase, in keeping with Item 1; Item 3 is a complete sentence, and therefore out of step; and Item 4 is also another sentence, even though ungrammatically constructed.

Parting note: Hopefully I have made my point about balanced constructions. I have compiled from our local newspapers a rather large list of examples of unbalanced constructions. I now leave some of the examples for readers to chew on.

1. “The (Penang Botanical) Gardens had neither lost its shine nor its charm.”

2. “The largest known flower in the world is that of Rafflesia keithii with a diameter of up to 1m and weighing up to 9kg.”

3. “… people whom he has entrusted the job of promoting and improving the sports are incapable of brilliance, unworthy of his trust and inefficient.”

4. “… previous attempts to explain the concept of carbon trading and how it may be used as a first step in the battle against global warming.”

5. ”Azizan did not reveal the exco member’s name or his whereabouts and if he was away on official duties.”

6. “… Julia not only had torn two major ligaments but also the meniscus.”

7. “… towards the progress of George Town specifically, and the state of Penang in general.”

8. “The device … doesn’t only function as a conventional hearing aid but also can be used to mask unpleasant sounds ….”

- THE STAR