Sloppy immigration card

MIND OUR ENGLISH Wednesday April 18, 2007

Sloppy immigration card
I RECEIVED this arrival declaration card (given out by the Immigration Department) on my flight back to Malaysia.

I think there are some errors on the first page of the card (see picture):

1. The word "relevent" is wrong. It should be "relevant".


2. Instead of "read notice on page 4,6 and 7", the phrase should be "read the notice on pages 4, 6 and 7". (There should be a space between '4' and '6'.)

3. Instead of "Please tick appropriate box", the phrase should be "Please tick the appropriate box". – Lee Kim Chuan, Klang





The above article has attracted my comments hereunder which were forwarded on April 19, 2007 to The Editor from whom I have yet to receive any response.

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I refer to “Sloppy immigration card” under BOOB WATCH of MIND OUR ENGLISH of April 18.

I agree with Lee Kim Chuan, Klang.

However, it is not necessary to amend “page” to be “pages” because ellipsis is at work to make that section elliptical for “read notice on page 4, page 6 and page 7”.

READER’S DIGEST HOW TO WRITE AND SPEAK BETTER (reprinted in 2005) has (vide page 205) explained, “Language would be tedious if you had to spell everything out and keep repeating yourself. Fortunately, you can often leave words out, since listeners or readers mentally supply them for themselves. When you do this in a correctly grammatical way, you are using ‘ellipsis’.”

Kengt, Penang

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