ENGLISH PLAIN & SIMPLE
By Jose A. Carillo

A reader based in the United States, Jonathan F. Valdez, posted this interesting question in Jose Carillo’s English Forum a few days ago: “I’ve seen the phrases ‘to the contrary’ and ‘on the contrary’ not a few times in legal briefs. If they have distinct uses, what’s the rule on usage?”
Here’s how the grammar for those two phrases works:

The discourse markers “on the contrary” and “to the contrary” convey practically the same sense—that something is in opposition to what’s expected—but they are generally not interchangeable in usage.
When something has just been said, “on the contrary” is commonly used to emphasize that the opposite of that statement is true. Example: “The candidates for vice chairman aren’t an exciting choice at all; on the contrary, they just douse the enthusiasm of intelligent voters.”

On the other hand, “to the contrary” is usually used by a speaker or writer to alert the audience that what’s to be said next is the opposite of what has just been said. Example: “Despite several compelling testimonies to the contrary, the accused was convicted of homicide.”

From a sentence structure standpoint, note that in the case of “on the contrary,” a complete statement or an entire argument is typically made first (“the candidates for vice chairman aren’t an exciting choice at all”). The discourse marker “on the contrary” is then inserted, followed by another complete statement to the contrary (“it just douses the enthusiasm of intelligent voters”). In short, “on the contrary” is commonly used as a conjunctive adverb between two parallel clauses.

In the case of “to the contrary,” the discourse marker is typically used to mark a contrast between a particular noun or noun phrase just mentioned (“several compelling testimonies”) and a statement that follows it (“the accused was convicted of homicide”). In such sentence constructions, “to the contrary” forms part of a prepositional phrase modifying a sentence. (Note that the example sentence given in this case can be reconstructed as “The accused was convicted of homicide despite several compelling testimonies to the contrary,” showing that it’s actually only one clause with the preposition “despite” introducing the modifying phrase.)

In conversational English, however, this distinction between the usage of “on the contrary” and “to the contrary” is sometimes lost, as in the following conversation:

Woman A: You seem to be so agitated. Have you lost anything?

Woman B: On the contrary [to the contrary], I’m very happy! I just got the big job I applied for!
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Last September 19, I wrote about a recurrent glaring grammar error in the closing spiel for the news analysis segment of QTV’s News on Q. That grammar error is committed every time Prof. Solita Monsod, the sharp, bubbly economist from the University of the Philippines, fastidiously intones this catch phrase: “No issue is too big or too small to affect you.” I pointed out in my column that this statement is bad
English, for it seriously misuses a figure of speech known as litotes, a rhetorical form of emphasis in which a statement is expressed by denying its opposite. The problem is that the statement fails to deny its opposite. To make sense, it has to effect that negation by inserting a “not” before the phrase “to affect you,” so it would read as follows: “No issue is too big or too small not to affect you.”

I was hoping that through my column, Prof. Monsod and the scriptwriters of QTV would somehow get to know about this serious grammar error and quietly correct it. Last Monday, however, I watched News on Q and saw that Prof. Monsod still blithely uses that wrongly constructed litotes in her closing spiel. I wonder when somebody at QTV would be courageous enough to let her know about the grammar problem and suggest that she correct it.

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