This archive report was first published on 20 April 2020.
On April 20, 2020, Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe admitted that the COVID-19 virus was spreading through community transmission. This admission was made on a day when the government was considering either locking down the entire country or the four counties of Nairobi, Mombasa, Kilifi, and Kwale that had been declared hotspots.
However, a critic at The Media Observer (TMO) took issue with the government's use of the word 'toying' to describe their consideration of a lockdown. The critic argued that the word 'toying' implies a casual consideration of an idea, rather than a serious consideration.
But the critic's argument was marred by grammatical errors. For example, the critic described a gathering as 'an assembly or meeting of people for a specific purpose', which is a correct definition of a gathering. However, the critic then proceeded to mislead by suggesting that a gathering could enjoy 'a cold beer', which implies that one bottle of beer was shared among the group.
A more accurate way to phrase this would be 'officials gathered somewhere enjoying cold beer', which leaves no room for ambiguity. This phrase implies that each person in the group had their own cold beer to drink.
The critic also made another grammatical error by saying 'break out into laughter', which is ungrammatical. The correct phrase would be 'break into laughter', 'burst into laughter', or 'break up in laughter'. Similarly, the critic used the phrase 'bite chicken', which is a poor choice of words. A more accurate phrase would be 'chewing chicken', which implies biting and munching food to make it easier to swallow.
Finally, the critic took issue with the government's use of the phrase 'locking down the country', which is far removed from the phrasal verb 'lock down'. While 'locking' means to 'fasten' or 'padlock', 'lock down' means 'state of isolation or restriction'.
Mr. Chagema is a copy editor at The Standard.
