Thank you for visiting The Sh*t Detector! You may subscribe to my feeds via RSS reader or via e-mail. Choose a sharing service below each post to share my posts with your friends, or add me as a friend on Facebook. Enjoy reading!
I'm both surprised and disappointed to see that even captions--yes, those short texts describing what photos show--are grammatically flawed. The examples below suffer from incorrect verb tense. I guess this is a result of a writer's "need" to tell the 4 Ws and H in writing--i.e., they seem to always feel compelled to tell the what, who, where, when, and how.
Let's look at the following captions.
Above: The caption uses the present-tense verb acknowledges although the action takes place in the past, marked by the adverb last Friday. Think about it, really. Written apart from the photo, it's just a simple sentence that is grammatically wrong. Don't you agree?
Suggestion: If the photo comes with a story, which is usually the case, you don't have give every what-when-who-and-how in the caption. You can give those details in the story. A simple Willie Revillame acknowledges his supporters outside the Quezon City Regional Trial Court ought to be enough. Better yet, use the correct verb tense.
Next...
As you notice, just taking out the adverb would have made these captions grammatically correct. Here is an example:
Take great care when writing captions. They may have cameo roles but, hey, they are sentences too!
0 comments:
Post a Comment