Category Archives: Nit-picking

Parental advisory: inexplicit content

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Content warnings and advisories aren’t always as explicit as they should be, given the explicit material they’re designed to protect our kids against. Often couched in ambiguous terms, they can leave much to the imagination or to broad interpretation — with sometimes dubious or downright silly results.

The ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) says that its ratings “provide concise and objective information about the content in video games and apps so consumers, especially parents, can make informed choices.” For games in its “Everyone 10+” category, it warns that the content “may contain … mild language and/or minimal suggestive themes.” Isn’t “mild language” what a toddler speaks when she’s just getting beyond the babbling stage? And as for “minimal suggestive themes”, are we talking about American works of art from the ’60s and early ’70s, or sparse interior decors?

A common warning for parents is that “mild peril” is contained in children’s movies. Is there really such a thing as “mild peril”? Peril, according to most dictionaries, means “serious and immediate danger”. Can serious and immediate danger be mild?

The Classification Board in Australia (where, incidentally, the censorship of video games and internet sites is said to be the strictest in the western world) classifies all material shown in movies, TV and videos. Its “M” rated material is “recommended for people with a mature perspective but is not deemed too strong for younger viewers. Language is moderate in impact.” How do I know if I or my child — or my spouse or parent, for that matter — have a mature enough perspective to view said M movie? And if its language is only moderate in impact, should we be looking for another movie with a better screenplay?

Here’s another good one: “adult situations”. To quote Calvin and Hobbes (the cartoon characters created by Bill Watterson): Calvin: The TV listings say this movie has “adult situations.” What are adult situations? Hobbes: Probably things like going to work, paying bills and taxes, taking responsibilities… Calvin: Wow, they don’t kid around when they say “for mature audiences.”

According to the MPAA classification system, one of the criteria for the R rating is “pervasive language”. The new movie Nebraska is rated R “for some language”. Don’t most movie screenplays nowadays have “pervasive language” or “some language”? I thought they all did, at least since talkies were invented. Screenwriters beware: you might just write and rate yourself out of a job.

“Contains behaviour which could be imitated” is one of the BBC’s online content advisories. Well, first of all it’s mildly perilous grammatically: it should more properly read “contains behaviour that could be imitated” (better conjunction). But that’s for another discussion. Can’t a lot of behavior that you see online be imitated — whether or not you even want to try and be like Jack Donaghy in 30 Rock or Luke Skywalker in Star Wars? This advisory sounds more like an offering to stand-up comedians than a warning to parents of young and impressionable children.

Parental advisories for Batman Begins (and many other movies) warn of “revealing clothing” and “dysfunctional relationships”. Whoa. But do kids really need to follow the adventures of the caped crusader in order to catch a glimpse of either of those mildly perilous phenomena? I’d say they’re more like blanket content advisories for 21st-century life.

Here’s one of Wikipedia’s several stern disclaimers. It isn’t inexplicit or vague in any way, but it does seem just a little over the top, if not perhaps tongue-in-cheek:

“USE WIKIPEDIA AT YOUR OWN RISK: PLEASE BE AWARE THAT ANY INFORMATION YOU MAY FIND IN WIKIPEDIA MAY BE INACCURATE, MISLEADING, DANGEROUS, ADDICTIVE, UNETHICAL OR ILLEGAL.”

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Moving on from the (presumably) unintentionally inexplicit warnings, here are some spoof advisories that were designed for our entertainment. Warning: explicit content follows. (And I’m not being ironic; it really does.)

The musical show Avenue Q has warnings such as “PARENTAL ADVISORY: 60% adult situations and 40% foam rubber”, and “Not appropriate for children due to language and adult content such as full puppet nudity”.

Another show, Jersey Boys, offers this disclaimer: “This musical contains smoke, loud gunshots, strobe lights, and authentic, offensive Jersey vocabulary”.

Monty Python’s The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail contains this warning: “There is little or no offensive material [on this record] apart from four cunts, one clitoris, and a foreskin. And, as they only occur in this opening introduction, you’re past them now.”

One of the tag-lines for the 2008 movie An American Carol reads: “WARNING! This movie may be offensive to children, young people, old people, in-the-middle people, some people on the right, all people on the left, terrorists, pacifists, war-mongers, fish mongers, Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics (though you’d have to prove it to them), the ACLU, liberals, conservatives, neo-cons, ex-cons, future cons, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarian, people of color, people of no color, English speakers, English-as-a-second language speakers, non-speakers, men, women, more women, & Ivy League professors. Native Americans should be okay.”

One pair, two pairs, three pair, four …

 

threepairs

Is that a few pairs of socks, or three pair? I’ve never really understood the logic of that “singular plural” of pair, whose usage seems to me to be especially common here in America.

A Google search on the term “three pair of” produces 3,300,000 results (which seems strangely symmetrical, even though the expression sounds decidedly wrong). Now if we make those pairs properly plural — ie. “three pairs of” — and hit the Google button again, we have almost 12 times as many results (38,300,000). “Two pair of” on the British National Corpus turns up just 4 results, whereas adding an ‘s’ to pair takes us up to 157. On the Corpus of Contemporary American English, those figures are 36 and 484 respectively. So I think it’s safe to say that on both sides of the Atlantic, the logical plural with an ‘s’ wins out usage-wise.

Most usage guides prescribe “pairs” for its plural form, including Garner’s Modern American Usage, Fowler’s Modern English Usage, and Patricia O’Conner’s Woe Is I. Fowler states simply that “the plural form pairs is desirable after a numeral (e.g. seven pairs of jeans). The type seven pair of jeans is non-standard, at least in Br.E [British English].” Is he implying that the plural pair is an Americanism? Well, Garner shares Fowler’s preference, but does acknowledge the widespread non-standard option : “The preferred plural of pair is pairs. In nonstandard usage, pair often appears as a plural.” I wonder if it is considered more correct in the New World …

According to Merriam-Webster, “the usual plural is pairs, when there is no preceding number or indicator of number (as several).”  It gives “conflicting pairs of truths” as an example. But unlike the more traditional sticklers above, M-W concedes, strangely, that “when a number or indicator of number precedes pair, either pair or pairs may be used,” going on to cite examples such as “six pair of pants” and “three pairs of oars.” American Heritage recognizes that while “pairs” is the more common plural form, “pair” is not incorrect. It qualifies that “pair” or “pairs” can be used after a number other than one, “but the plural is now more common: She bought six pairs (or pair) of stockings.”

The word pair dates back to the mid-13th century, from the Old French paire meaning “pair, couple,” and directly from Medieval Latin paria meaning “equals”. It originally referred to things, and began to describe people from the late 14th century. Meaning “a woman’s breasts” is attested from 1922, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. Who knew.

Perhaps more curious is why certain household objects and items of clothing are referred to as a pair when they’re singular items, such as a pair of scissors, two pairs of spectacles, several pairs of jeans, and 100 pairs of underwear. That blades, lenses, and trouser-legs come in twos probably explains the first few, but the mind boggles a bit about the last. According to World Wide Words, “the answer to all this conventional plurality is very simple. Before the days of modern tailoring, such garments, whether underwear or outerwear, were indeed made in two parts, one for each leg. The pieces were put on each leg separately and then wrapped and tied or belted at the waist (just like cowboys’ chaps). The plural usage persisted out of habit even after the garments had become physically one piece. However, a shirt was a single piece of cloth, so it was always singular. It’s worth noting that the posher type of tailor, such as in London’s Savile Row, still often refers to a trouser and the singular pant and tight are not unknown in clothing store terminology in America — so the plural is not universal.”

Between and among

spacey

Talking about Netflix in a recent interview with the Toronto Star, Kevin Spacey made this comment: “For kids growing up, there’s no difference among watching Avatar on an iPad or watching YouTube on a TV or watching Game of Thrones on their smartphone. It’s all content. It’s all story.” It doesn’t sound right, does it? Is among the culprit? If we look at exactly why it sounds wrong, it starts getting complicated…

Most of us remember from grammar lessons the notion that between is appropriate for two items, and among is for three or more. That’s presumably what made Spacey (or the paper’s copy-editor) choose the latter word. If it’s really that simple, then Spacey’s comment shouldn’t grate on the ears, should it? But it does, and that’s because it isn’t that simple.

Strunk & White tried to explain it this way: “When more than two things or persons are involved, among is usually called for: ‘The money was divided among the four players.’ When, however, more than two are involved but each is considered individually, between is preferred: ‘an agreement between the six heirs.'” That doesn’t seem like a great explanation to me: I’m sure each of the four players was considered individually when the money was divided, and I’ll bet at least one of those six heirs wasn’t considered individually when the agreement was made! There’s something here that I’m still not getting.

Eric Partridge, in his book usage and abusage, presents it this way: “One divides money, goods, property between two persons, but among three or more. The distinction, however, is not so simple. When speaking either of group action, or of precise spatial relationship, one must use between however many participants are involved; as in ‘The children raised $25 between them’, or ‘Switzerland lies between France, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Italy.'” Ah: so because the division of money among Strunk & White’s players wasn’t a group action as such, but the heirs’ agreement was, this begins to make sense. But I’m still not sure I understand completely.

Here’s Fowler on the subject (with my bolding): “The OED gives a warning against the superstition that between can be used only of the relationship between two things, and that if there are more, among is the right preposition. ‘In all senses between has been, from its earliest appearance, extended to more than two . . . It is still the only word available to express the relation of a thing to many surrounding things severally and individually; among expresses a relation to them collectively and vaguely: we should not say the space lying among the three points or a treaty among three Powers.‘ But the superstition dies hard. Seventy years after those words were written the following sentence cannot escape suspicion of being under its influence: The peaceful, independent, and self-governing status of Cyprus is conditional on the continuance of cordial relations among Britain, Greece, and Turkey.”

Grammar Girl distills the idea quite well, saying, “You can use the word “between” when you are talking about distinct, individual items even if there are more than two of them. For example, you could say, ‘She chose between Harvard, Brown, and Yale’ because the colleges are individual items. … On the other hand, you use “among” when you are talking about things that aren’t distinct items or individuals; for example, if you were talking about colleges collectively you could say, ‘She chose among the Ivy League schools.'” And to add to Grammar Girl’s last example, if you said that “she chose between the Ivy League schools”, that would surely suggest that there are only two such institutions.

Going back to Kevin Spacey’s comment, and taking into account everything said above, it does seem to follow that he could have chosen between when comparing the three distinct and individual watching experiences: there’s no group action or spatial relationship at play here, and there’s nothing vague or collective about the items he’s comparing. Let’s try substituting Spacey’s among with between and see how it sounds: “For kids growing up, there’s no difference between watching Avatar on an iPad or watching YouTube on a TV or watching Game of Thrones on their smartphone. It’s all content.” Hmmm: that still sounds wrong. Why?

There is another important factor to consider. It’s the word that goes “between” the two or more items under discussion: this should, in fact, only ever be and, at least when between is in play. Fowler has strong words to say about the very common mistake — when employing a between clause — of using connective words other than and, such as or, against, or to. “In the commonest use of between, i.e. where two terms are separately specified, the one and only right connexion between those terms is and. But writers indulge in all sorts of freaks; the more exceptional and absurd of these, in which against, whereas, and to are experimented with, are illustrated in: He distinguishes between certain functions for which full and rigorous training is necessary, whereas others can very well be discharged by me who have had only the limited training. / Societies with membership between one thousand to five thousand. These are freaks or accidents…”

So, what if we keep between in Spacey’s comment and change all his ‘or‘s to ‘and‘s? “For kids growing up, there’s no difference between watching Avatar on an iPad and watching YouTube on a TV and watching Game of Thrones on their smartphone. It’s all content.”

That seems good, doesn’t it? Well, he does seem to suggest that all kids growing up are sharing just one smartphone: but that’s another discussion for another post …

 

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (Oct 25)

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That Gerund Is Funky: Words and language in the news during the week ending Oct 25.

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NPR took us on a linguistic journey through the word glitch … What is a glitch, anyway? Meaning everything from a catastrophe to a mere flaw, the word that began in the groovy 60s to describe uneventful snafus in space might now spell peril for Obama’s affordable healthcare act.

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“School Makes Parents Sign Contracts Promising Students Won’t Twerk or Grind at Homecoming Dance.” Yes, that’s a real headline in Time magazine. “It’s hard enough to explain twerking to parents. Now Maryland high schoolers have to explain twerking contracts.” The straight-faced magazine added this caption to the article’s accompanying photograph: “People who twerk or grind will get judgy looks.” Judgy?

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The Guardian‘s David Marsh called for the appointment of a Language Czar, to outlaw ugly business and political lingo, as reported in Prospect magazine. March also argued, in the New Statesman and the New Republic, that “the golden age of grammar is a myth. … Just think about the gay times we had in the old days, when spam was something that went into fritters and you kept your mouse in a cage. The belief that all change is for the worse is invariably accompanied by the conviction that standards of literacy are falling. Such fears date from at least the 18th century.”

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Huffington Post identified 9 words or phrases in everyday use that have racist or prejudiced origins (or murky historical pasts). Who knew that “uppity” once had more repugnant connotations?

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An appalled Daniel E. Jones wrote a letter to the editor of Baton Rouge’s The Advocate, complaining that the paper’s bad grammar (on the first two pages of its Metro section) seems to reflect a lack of education. Joan E. McDonald of Lethbridge up in Canada directed a similar complaint at her local paper, the Lethbridge Herald. But here’s a juicy one: the Washington Post must have hung its head in shame when it received this letter from one of its readers, complaining about an especially egregious ungrammatical utterance — by a penguin no less — in one of the paper’s recent editions. “’It’s me and my wife’s 20th anniversary.’ Listen, kids may be reading this stuff,” warned Jack Fretwell from Reston.

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It’s OK to retweet, but not to copy and paste on Twitter. CNBC Africa has been accused of Twitter plagiarism by its competitor, Business Day Television (BDTV), after it admittedly lifted messages posted by BDTV during South African finance minister Pravin Gordhan’s midterm budget speech. “As far as I know, publishing someone’s content as your own is plagiarism. Or does the Twittersphere have a different set of rules?,” BDTV boss Vernon Matzopolous wrote, according to TechCentral.

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When is it OK to use incorrect punctuation? When you’re listing something on eBay, explained Angus Kidman on LifeHacker. “When you’re listing items for sale on eBay and the product name includes punctuation, you should not include it in the headline. The reason? Most people find stuff to buy by searching rather than browsing, and most people are too bloody stupid to use correct punctuation. They will type the punctuation-free version. If you want to top those search results, you have to use the incorrect rendering.” Perhaps this is wise advice for anyone posting a searchable internet listing?

TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky (4 Oct)

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Welcome to “TGIF: That Gerund Is Funky”, a new weekly feature on Glossophilia. Every Friday, you’ll find a digest of some of the week’s best offerings about language, literature, grammar, usage and abusage — on the web and on the wire. Some of it will make you laugh, some might make you cry. Some will be genuinely useful, a lot of it won’t, and there will be stuff you just won’t believe. Enjoy (it).

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On Facebook, Grammarly posted some incorrect word definitions offered by creative and lateral-thinking students. One of my favorites is Adamant: “pertaining to original sin” …

The Guardian reassured us that there are 10 grammar rules we no longer need to worry about. And one of those is starting sentences with a conjunction; another is all about what you should and shouldn’t end them with.

You think “OMG” or “srsly” are 21st-century inventions? You might have to think again, as Jen Doll, in The Atlantic‘s October issue, takes a look at the not-so-recent history of today’s hottest expressions (not yet online).

The Associated Press reported on the rise in heritage language programs — and why the need for them has grown. “Dorothy Villarreal grew up dreaming in Spanish, first in Mexico and later in South Texas, where her family moved when she was six. She excelled in school — in English. But at home life was in Spanish, from the long afternoon chats with her grandparents to the Spanish-language version of Barbie magazines she eagerly awaited each month. She figured she was fluent in both languages. Then the Harvard University junior spent last summer studying in Mexico and realized just how big the gaps in her Spanish were.”

Pride’s Purge offered us a very useful document: a pocket guide to Toryspeak – ie. what Tories (aka members of the British Conservative Party) say vs. what Tories mean. When they say they’re reforming the NHS, what do they REALLY mean? And what does everyone understand by it?

Keith Houston gives us a sneak peek [see Stealth Mountain below] of his new book, Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks, when he describes “four scandalously overlooked typographic outliers” in the Financial Times.

You might not want to try singing like David Bowie – but now you can read like him. As part of the exhibition “David Bowie Is”, which recently opened at the Art Gallery of Toronto, a list of the legendary singer’s top 100 books has been compiled. Open Book Toronto has the list.

The writer Margaret Atwood is among a group of prominent Canadian women who have launched a campaign to make the English-language lyrics to Canada’s national anthem more gender-neutral, as the BBC reports.

Oliver Moody wrote in The Times (UK) that “many teachers do not have adequate knowledge of English grammar to teach the new curriculum, according to the architect of a government-funded teaching programme. Bas Aarts, a professor of English linguistics at University College London, … said that the English tests for pupils up to the age of 14 introduced by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, demanded more knowledge of grammar than many teachers possess.”

mental_floss brought us 9 colorful words and phrases from Breaking Bad‘s final season. (Here’s what I learned: The next time someone offers to send you on a trip to Belize, run in the other direction. Fast.)

On The Guardian‘s U.S. comment site, self-confessed accent geek Erica Buist asks whether Britain is becoming a nation of accent snobs. If we Brits don’t take the trouble to pronounce foreign words like bruschetta correctly, do we have the right to judge those who communicate less comfortably in English?

If you read literary fiction, you’ll become more empathic. That’s what a new scientific study shows, according to a New York Times science blog post. Apparently “reading literary fiction – as opposed to popular fiction or serious nonfiction – leads people to perform better on tests that measure empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence.” Um – do we really need scientists to tell us that? I hear a big resounding ‘duh!’ echoing through the chattering book groups of the world …

And finally, I think I’ve found my favorite Tweeter. Here is how Stealth Mountain @stealthmountain advertises his or her mission: “I alert twitter users that they typed sneak peak when they meant sneak peek. I live a sad life.” The replies to Stealth’s tweets are even funnier than the tweets themselves. Thanks to Reddit for the tip-off.

Which or that: the ongoing debate (and a Brit-Yank divider?)

whichthat

I stumbled on something interesting in the Oxford English Dictionary. It contradicts itself on the subject of which and that, using the relative pronoun which in a definition for which it (the OED) — in its own definitions of which and that — prescribes that. This seems to be symptomatic of a larger ongoing debate about the two relative pronouns that divides not just individual grammar commentators (both lay and professional) but also, apparently, two nations.

First, here’s a brief primer on the original (but now sometimes disputed or diluted) difference between which and that. According to the dictionary mentioned above — specifically the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (the 1993 edition): which (when used as a relative pronoun) is defined as “introducing a clause describing or stating something additional about the antecedent, the sense of the main clause being complete without the relative clause.” The same dictionary gives the relative pronoun that a different role in the sentence, “introducing a clause defining or restricting the antecedent, especially a clause essential to the identification of the antecedent (and thus completing its sense).”

An earlier Glossophilia post explains and illustrates this difference a little more simply: “‘That’ … qualifies or identifies the noun preceding it, pinpointing which one of two or more nouns is being referred to. ‘Which’ … simply adds extra but non-identifying information about the preceding noun. A good rule of thumb is this: if the that/which clause can be taken away and you still understand the reference, it must be a which. If you take it away and you’re unsure about what is being referenced, it must be a that.” (See the earlier post for examples.)

Now let’s go to the iffy definition in question: here is the noun prequel defined by the NSOED quoted above:

“A book, film, etc., portraying events which precede those of an existing work.”

prequel

According to its own definition of which, the “which clause” presented here about prequel (“which precede those of an existing work”) should be additional to the main clause (“a book, film, etc., portraying events”) and the sense of that main clause should be complete without it. So, technically, “a book, film, etc., portraying events” should stand alone as a complete and understandable clause in its own right. Hmmm … I don’t think so. That second clause is absolutely necessary to complete the definition, and therefore should be started by the word that, which (according to the OED, as noted above) introduces a clause “essential to the identification of the antecedent (and thus completing its sense)”. The definition should therefore read: “A book, film, etc., portraying events that precede those of an existing work.” At least that’s as prescribed by the historical/original respective uses of which and that, which have in the last century become rather murky — especially on the eastern side of the Atlantic.

I have noticed especially in recent years that the British (but not the Americans — at least not to the same extent) have shown a tendency to substitute that with which, as the OED has done in the prequel definition above. And almost as if to justify the switch (or what some might regard as the error),  they remove the comma that normally precedes which in its traditional role as a  non-identifying pronoun. Curiously it’s never done the other way around: ie. that is never used instead of which. Let’s look at the following examples:

“I gave him the red coat, which my mother had worn earlier.” Here, the which clause is not defining, and the main clause is therefore complete in itself: “I gave him the red coat.”

“I gave him the coat that suited him best.”  The that clause is defining (ie. it is identifying the coat in question), so the clause is essential for the sentence to make sense; without the that clause, it wouldn’t be clear which coat is being referred to.

Now the Brits might well write: “I gave him the coat which suited him best.” They are using which instead of that to start the defining clause (“which suited him best”) and removing the comma before it to make the substitution easier on the ear. But they would be unlikely to write: “I gave him the red coat, that my mother had worn earlier.”

This interchangeability or substitution is heard much less frequently on American shores, where that and which tend to retain their traditional respective identifying and non-identifying roles.

My father, Brian Barder (a staunch Brit linguistically as well as in other ways), argues that both Robert Burchfield and Roger Fowler, two of the world’s most respected authorities on language usage, were tolerant of and relaxed about what and that being interchangeable, with both of them noting that some of the best writers tend to disregard any historical difference between the relative pronouns. Here is what Barder explains:

“Burchfield/Fowler (MEU 3rd ed.) in section 3 of the that entry says that most of the time which and that are interchangeable without any “offence to any rule of syntax”, and quotes the original Fowler as ‘wisely’ observing in 1926 that  ‘if writers would agree to regard that as the defining relative pronoun and which as the non-defining, there would be much gain in lucidity and in ease.  Some there are who follow this principle now;  but it would be idle to pretend that it is the practice either of most or of the best writers.’

“I am pretty sure that the distinction has been much further eroded since 1926.

“Burchfield continues with a longish piece about additional complications when either relative pronoun is preceded by a comma, the fact that that can’t idiomatically be preceded by a preposition whereas which can, that that has no possessive form (unlike which), circs in which that is leading a defining clause can often be omitted and understood, but not when it leads a non-defining clause …  and more.  It’s on p 774 of my edition.”

But I think it’s safe to argue that Americans are just different from the British on this particular issue of tolerance and acceptability. Curiously, in this case it’s the Americans who are being the traditionalists — when it’s so often the other way round. It’s also a clear indication to me that I’ve truly joined the ranks of the Americans, at least on this one usage issue.

 

 

JAY Z no longer mononymous

jayz

It’s nice to see the modest and often-misused hyphen making headline news.

Yesterday, the Mirror explained that “the US rapper has dropped the hyphen from his title and is teasing us with some CAPS LOCK action.”

The BBC screamed from its red-topped roofs: “JAY Z changes spelling of his name”

“A source has confirmed that the hyphen has been dropped and that it is now ‘all capital letters’.”

Billboard editor Joe Levy tweeted: “JAY Z has dropped the hyphen from his name, according to his label. I am not kidding. (Wish I was.) Copy editors: take note.”

With this spelling change, JAY Z leaves the ranks of a distinguished list of mononymous celebrity artists, past and present. Here are some of those he has left behind:

Adele
Beyoncé
Bono
Cher
Drake
Enya
Flea
Hammer
Ice-T
Ke$ha
Ludacris
Lulu
Madonna
Moby
Pink
Prince
?uestlove
Raffi
Sting
Twiggy
Usher
Yanni

 

 

 

 

Posterior to using prior to, do you feel just a tad pompous?

BeforeandAfter

Why use “prior to” when before works just as well? Linguists and writers have explained — in tones ranging from polite to contemptuous — why “prior to” never needs to see the light of day, variously dismissing its use as affected, pompous, overworked, corporate, or inflated. Glossophilia has nothing to add (except to suggest that “prior to” might be quite useful as a crossword clue). Bryson, Shore, Bernstein, Gowers and Kimble: let it rip!

  • Bill Bryson summed it up nicely in his Dictionary of Troublesome Words: “Before, prior to. There is no difference between these two except length and a certain affectedness on the part of ‘prior to’. To paraphrase [Theodore] Bernstein, if you would use ‘posterior to’ instead of ‘after’, then by all means use ‘prior to’ instead of ‘before’.”
  • Michael Shore on his Language Lore blog brands the use of “prior to” instead of before as a hyperurbanism.
  • Publisher’s Weekly describes its usage: “Sometimes termed pompous or affected, prior to is a synonym of before that most often appears in rather formal contexts, such as the annual reports of corporations.”
  • Theodore M. Bernstein in The Careful Writer: “Prior to is a ‘‘faddish affectation for before. Would you say posterior to in place of after?’’
  • Roy H. Copperud in American Usage and Style: “Prior to is ‘pompous in the sense before.’’
  • Bryan A. Garner in A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage: ‘‘Prior to is a terribly overworked lawyerism. Only in rare contexts is it not much inferior to before.’’
  • Sir Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words: ‘‘There is no good reason to use prior to as a preposition instead of before. Before is simpler, better known and more natural, and therefore preferable.’’

And Kimble puts it most eloquently:

  • Joseph Kimble in A Modest Wish List for Legal Writing: ‘‘Prior to takes the booby prize for the most common inflated phrase in legal and official writing. Why would anyone prefer it to before? Try to think of a single literary title or line that uses prior to. . . . By itself, prior to may seem insignificant. But it often leads to clumsy, indirect constructions . . . . More important, a fondness for prior to may indicate a fondness for jargon—and a blind resistance to using plain words. That resistance, that cast of mind, is in large part responsible for the state of legal writing.’’