This short post is about ways we can present examples in English. In Hong Kong English, users often use the word 'including' to present examples in a way that is incorrect.
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Of course you know that did is the past tense of do. But did you know that the question 'did you know…?' is not simply the past tense form of 'do you know?'
Today's blog post is about an unusual aspect of noun use in English that many Hong Kong writers are unaware of. it leads to frequent errors in their writing.
Very often when I send edited documents or other materials by email to a client, I receive a reply thanking me and a comment that the files "are well received". This expression is commonly used in Hong Kong English to mean "we have received the files without any problems of delivery, and they are all here".
Despite being so common in Hong Kong, this is not an expression you will find in standard English elsewhere in the world. Referring to non-specific persons: should we use ‘he', 's/he', 'he or she', or ‘they’? — PART 215/4/2015 In Part 1 of this post, I mentioned the old-fashioned method of referring to a non-specific person using the pronoun ‘he’ (as shown in sentence 1 below). In this post I want to consider options 2 and 3.
Referring to non-specific persons: should we use ‘he', 's/he', 'he or she', or ‘they’? — PART 18/4/2015 This is the first of a short series of posts on an important topic: when we want to talk about a non-specific person, what pronoun should we use to refer to that person? Here are some of the standard possibilities in English:
Recently [22 March 2015], a columnist in the weekly English column of a local Hong Kong newspaper discussed a common error involving the word ‘worth’. The writer noted that many Hong Kong English users consider ‘worth’ to be a verb, as in the following sentence:
[1] *This painting worths a lot of money. [INCORRECT] The correct way of expressing this sentence in English is: [2] This painting is worth a lot of money. Though the writer was quite right to call this an error, his explanation of why was less convincing. The word ‘staff’ poses a problem for many users of English in Hong Kong. What exactly does it refer to? Is it singular or plural? Is it a countable noun or an uncountable noun?
Today I want to talk about a common expression in Hong Kong official writing: “the captioned X” (where X is a noun like study, topic, application etc). Here is an example: Resumption of Original Traffic Arrangements on Chi Fu Road
Here, “the captioned resumption” is intended to mean something like “the resumption previously mentioned in the heading of this document”. Similarly, in the next two examples, the words study and application have previously appeared in the headings of the two documents:
The problem with this usage is that it is completely different from the way the word caption is used in modern standard English. Its normal usage nowadays is to mean “a short piece of text placed under or beside a picture to provide information about it”. Thus what you see below is a picture with a caption, or a captioned picture: Welcome to this very first blog post on the new Cygnet Communications Ltd website! My aim is for the Cygnet blog to be updated at least weekly. Each blog post will focus on a topic connected specifically with English usage in Hong Kong.I’m going to start by looking at some signs from around Hong Kong that prohibit certain things or actions in the form “NO + noun” – like the ones shown below. These Hong Kong signs are not the same as similar signs in standard English. |
About this blogThis blog arises from keeping an eye on English in Hong Kong. I often use signs, notices and advertisements that I see as starting points to write about English issues that commonly challenge Hong Kong writers. Archives
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