Your poor English could be part of their book

SINGAPORE - Civil servant Judith d'Silva has amassed hundreds of examples of bad English during the almost three decades she has spent in the service.

Now, she intends to publish her collection of bad English to help promote the use of proper English.

Ms d'Silva believes her collection could come in handy, particularly for this year's Speak Good English campaign - to be launched tomorrow - which is hoping to appeal to Singaporeans with different levels of language proficiency by enlarging the environment where proper English is used.

Some examples of bad English in the civil service:

- "Revert" means to return to a previous state. It does not mean reply. Better to write, "Please reply by …".

- Use "with regard to", not "with regards to". "Regards" is normally used only in expressions like "please give them my best regards".

- Avoid redundancies such as "the reason is because". The correct phrase is "the reason is that".

- "Repeat" means "do again". Just say, "Please repeat your question", not "Please repeat your question again".

- When indicating a time period, use "between ... and ...", not "between ... to ...". MORE