At one time or another, Americans have experienced shortages in petroleum, water, rubber, grains, sugar, butter, cheese, meats and flu vaccines. The latest shortage may be in a part of speech. Broadcast news media appear to have enacted verb rationing.
Verbs once were the stock-in-trade of action-oriented news media. Today, however, many television and radio newscasts are peppered with sentence fragments lacking verbs, masquerading as sentences.
In an evening newscast, an anchor declared:
“The President releasing his budget proposal today. And on the chopping block, California’s flood control projects and wildfire management.”
Neither of those statements is a complete sentence. The first contains a word that looks like a verb, but it’s not; it’s a gerund. That second fragment about the financial “chopping block” lacks a verb of any kind.
In order to form a sentence, a grouping of words must contain at least a subject and a verb, and must be able to stand independently.
The verb is such an essential component of a sentence that it can constitute a sentence on its own. Stop! Hurry! Listen! Jump! Those are imperative sentences, beseeching or commanding someone to take some action. In such sentences, the subject “you” is understood, a concept that the “Dick and Jane” readers dating to the 1930s taught. “Look, Dick. Look, Jane. See Sally. See silly Sally.”
Not all verbs can stand independently, however. The verb “flow,” for example, is meaningless without an accompanying noun — a subject. What flows? Perhaps the river flows. That would make sense.
Likewise, a noun cannot function without an accompanying verb. Television. What about it? Watch television? Dust the television? Buy a television? Turn the television off? The verb specifies what you want to do with the television.
In a story about a series of fires in Southern California, a television news anchor reported:
“This is only the second week of May, and yet Cal Fire has already responded to three large wildfires across our state — one in Los Angeles County, one in San Bernardino County, and the latest in Tehama County. All of those fires, though, now 100 percent contained.”
That closing utterance is not a sentence because it lacks a verb. It consists only of a subject (“those fires”) and a parenthetical phrase (“though now 100 percent contained”). That fragment appeared to be leading to a concluding statement. An astute viewer might have expected something like “All of those fires, though now 100 percent contained, may continue smoldering for 48 hours or longer.”
Why, then, did the newscaster exclude a verb? It couldn’t have been to save time, because he could have turned his fragment into a sentence by plugging in a one-syllable verb: “are.” All of those fires, though, are now 100 percent contained. And if he truly couldn’t spare the half-second to add “are,” he could have deleted another single-syllable word — the preposition “of” — which is superfluous in the context of the sentence. The result: All those fires, though, are now 100 percent contained.
Broadcasters commonly mistake gerunds for verbs, resulting in sentence fragments. Here are a few examples of that recurrent goof that we heard on 13 of the 26 stations and networks that we monitored during the past few weeks.
“Harvard Business Publishing launching a new Web site for leadership development professionals who are seeking out interactive learning experiences and information on talent management and strategy.”
NO. Harvard Business Publishing has launched a Web site.
“Businessman racing mogul Roger Penske finally discussing in public all the problems surrounding Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Of course, Roger Penske was the quarterback of our successful Superbowl XL a couple of years ago.”
NO. Roger Penske finally is discussing (or finally discussed).
“Good morning. Stock index futures plummeting today after J.P. Morgan Chase bought Bear Stearns at a ‘fire sale’ price, and the Federal Reserve provided emergency cash to Wall Street.”
NO. Stock index futures plummeted.
“San Jose police investigating an early morning police chase yesterday that ended with officers shooting at the fleeing car. According to the CHP, the officers tried to pull a driver over on Highway 87 at about 2:30 in the morning. The driver, who didn’t have his headlights on, stepped on the gas instead.”
NO. San Jose police are investigating.
“The Ancient Order of Hibernians celebrating St. Patrick’s Day today with a parade in Dogtown. Grand Marshal Jim Mohan says it’ll start on Tam Avenue’s overpass at 12:30, and run to Manchester.”
NO. The Ancient Order of Hibernians will celebrate with a parade (which had not yet occurred at the time of the newscast).
“Atlanta residents bracing for more storms after a tornado hit downtown last night. National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch for a large part of Georgia as well as parts of South Carolina and Alabama. President Bush granting federal aid to much of Texas following wildfires which spread across the state. More than 133,000 acres have burned since strong winds whipped up flames yesterday. No injuries have been reported. Firefighters still trying to put out those flames.”
NO. Atlanta residents are bracing or began bracing last night. President Bush has granted (or said he will grant) federal aid. Firefighters are still trying to extinguish flames. A gerund is a word that, although derived from a verb, functions as a noun in a sentence. Gerunds are easy to recognize because they end in -ing. The words racing, painting, working and singing are gerunds.
In the sentence Flooding threatens the valley, the subject is the gerund flooding; the verb is threatens; and the direct object of the verb is the valley. The subject could just as easily have been another noun — inundation or deluge, for example.
The -ing ending also is used in the English language to form participles, which are verb forms but which cannot stand on their own. A participle can constitute an adjective — for example:
The plumber fixed the leaking faucet.
Dripping, Nancy took refuge from the storm in the old barn. (In that sentence, dripping is used adjectivally to describe Nancy’s appearance.) A participle also is a verb form that is used to produce certain tenses in combination with auxiliary verbs. In the sentence Wilhelm is running in today’s marathon, the verb consists of two words: is running. Together, they form the present progressive tense, which is used to indicate a continuing action or condition. Its use in the example sentence is appropriate if the race is still under way, and if Wilhelm is running at this moment.
A participle also can be used to form the past progressive tense, which indicates a past continuing action that ended at some time in the past. Here’s an example: The committee members were traveling through much of April.
Another variation is the present perfect progressive tense, which consists of a three-word verb sequence and is used to indicate an ongoing activity that may continue indefinitely. Here’s an example: The technician has been working on the air conditioner for three hours, but he’s not finished yet.
Perhaps some newscasters, or writers who prepare their scripts, mistakenly think the suffix -ing signals action more than proper verbs do. That possibility might help explain the motivation behind these misguided news excerpts:
“Officials in Georgia asking people that work in downtown Atlanta to still take the day off, even though the weather is gorgeous in the ‘peach city.’ They’re still cleaning up the areas hit hard by Friday’s Atlanta tornado. Many streets are still closed; hundreds of traffic lights are still out in Georgia’s capital.”
“Former President Bill Clinton making a swing through Northern California today, trying to sway those undecided voters. Mr. Clinton speaking to supporters at Cal Expo today. He didn’t mention Barack Obama by name, but he did highlight the differences of Hillary Clinton’s health-care proposal.”
“After the break, we’ll tell you why an annual tradition facing some tough times.” [television station “teaser” for a story on an appearance by the Blue Angels at the California Capital Airshow]
“Sprint Nextel is merging with Clearwire to form a wireless firm — a new one. Backing that: Comcast, Intel and Google. This will set up competition for AT&T and Verizon. And Yahoo’s directors facing backlash now from shareholders after rejecting the Microsoft bid.” The odd practice of verb rationing is not limited to local news stations. Network newscasts engage in it, too.
“In Iraq, fierce fighting under way in the southern city of Basra. Thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces cracking down on Shiite militias there. The area around Basra is Iraq’s major source of oil.”
Only one of those three statements — the last — is a complete sentence.
“An accident on a Myanmar river involving a boat carrying supplies for the International Red Cross to victims of the powerful cyclone last week. The group’s Joe Lowry says the boat hit a stump and overturned. Lowry also saying they’ll take a different route next time, but that the river would have been a quicker way to get to the surviving victims. If you think it can’t get any worse, think again. CNN’s John Lawrence reports the price of gas still climbing.”
In some cases, sentence fragments lack any semblance of a verb, excluding even a gerund. Among 12 statements in a Fox News Radio report heard May 7 on KFBK radio in Sacramento, only four were complete sentences. Four others used a gerund in place of a noun, while four fragments — highlighted here in italic type — lacked verbs of any kind. Take a look:
“That’s Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd. House debate has just begun on that bill. The situation in Myanmar getting worse. Reports of rioting and fights over food days after a cyclone leveled the country. The U.S. Embassy believes the death toll could reach 100,000. And oil prices now above $123 a barrel for the first time. That’s a new record. Consumer borrowing now double the rate it was two months ago. Triple-digit losses on Wall Street. The closing bell with Dow Jones dropping 206 points. Philadelphia dealing with a situation with police officers and citizens. The city removing a sergeant and five officers from the street for an investigation into a video showing officers kicking and beating three suspects.” With more astute writing, problematic sentence fragments in that newscast could have been rectified without adding a single syllable — and in some cases, with fewer syllables. Here are our revised versions:
Fragment: The situation in Myanmar getting worse. (12 syllables)
Corrected: The situation in Myanmar has worsened. (12 syllables)
Fragment: Reports of rioting and fights over food days after a cyclone leveled the country. (22 syllables)
Corrected: Riots and fights over food are occurring days after a cyclone leveled the country. (22 syllables)
Fragment: And oil prices now above $123 a barrel for the first time. (22 syllables)
Corrected: And oil prices now exceed $123 a barrel for the first time. (22 syllables)
Fragment: Consumer borrowing now double the rate it was two months ago. (16 syllables)
Corrected: Consumer borrowing has doubled during the past two months. (15 syllables)
Fragment: Triple-digit losses on Wall Street. (9 syllables)
Corrected: Wall Street bears triple-digit losses. (9 syllables)
Fragment: The closing bell with Dow Jones dropping 206 points. (14 syllables)
Corrected: By the closing bell, Dow Jones dropped 206 points. (13 syllables) In addition, nearly all sponsored programs broadcast on commercial and public television stations use the same grammatically bereft credit line: This program brought to you by…. That corrupted passive construction lacks a proper verb. It could become a grammatically correct simple past tense sentence by addition of the auxiliary verb was (This program was brought to you by…) or it could be placed in present perfect tense (This program has been brought to you by…).
The next time you’re feeling generous, send a few verbs to your favorite television or radio station or broadcast network. Or let them know that they can make their own if they discard the -ing suffix from the many gerunds that they indiscriminately use. The result could be gratifying.
Jeff March and Marti Childs are co-owners of EditPros LLC, an editorial services company that performs writing, editing and proofreading for businesses, educational institutions, research organizations, government agencies, and trade and professional organizations. EditPros, of Davis, Calif., was established in 1993. Marti and Jeff also teach writing and editing seminars, and are co-authors of a book titled “Echoes of the Sixties” (1999, Billboard Books, New York; ISBN: 0-8230-8316-0).
