Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Is ellipsis at work?



Customer can call the 24-hour TM Net Customer Interaction Centre at 1-300-88-9515 or 1-300-88-1515 from 8:00 a.m. till midnight.

The above sentence was singled out from a TMNET ANNOUNCEMENT of June 21, 2006 and published under BOOB WATCH in THE STAR'S MIND OUR ENGLISH of July 7, 2006 as follows:-

TM calls that 24 hours?
I WOULD love to call the 24-hour TM Net customer Interaction Centre at 3am. But it is only available from 8am to midnight! That's 24 hours? - K.T.Lim

I realized that ellipsis was obviously at play and I wrote to The Editor of Mind our English on July 9, 2006 as follows but received no response:-

In BOOB WATCH of July 7 with the question “TM calls that 24 hours?”, I think TM may not be wrong as the sentence concerned can be elliptical for “Customers can call the 24-hour TM Net Customer Interaction Centre at 1-300-88-9515 or customers can call 1-300-88-1515 from 8:00 a.m. till midnight”.

Kengt, Penang

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