False title

Last updated

A false, coined, fake, bogus or pseudo-title, also called a Time-style adjective and an anarthrous nominal premodifier, is a kind of preposed appositive phrase before a noun predominantly found in journalistic writing. It formally resembles a title, in that it does not start with an article, but is a common noun phrase, not a title. An example is the phrase convicted bomber in "convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh", rather than "the convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh". [1]

Contents

Some usage writers condemn false titles, and others defend it. Its use was originally American, but it has become widely accepted in some other countries. In British usage it was generally confined to tabloid newspapers but has been making some headway on British websites in recent years.[ when? ]

Terminology

In the description of a false title as an anarthrous nominal premodifier, "anarthrous" means "lacking an article", [2] and "nominal" is used in the sense "of the nature of a noun". [3] Other phrases for the usage include "pseudo title", "coined title" and "preposed appositive". [4] [5] [6]

In "Professor Herbert Marcuse", "Professor" is a title, while in "famed New Left philosopher Herbert Marcuse", [7] "famed New Left philosopher" has the same syntax, with the omitted at the beginning, but is not a title. The linguist Charles F. Meyer wrote that "pseudo-titles" differ from titles in providing a description rather than honoring the person (and that there are gray areas, such as "former Vice President Dan Quayle"). [4]

Usage

The practice occurs as early as the late 19th century, as in "The culmination of the episode at Sheepshead Bay last week between Trainer William Walden and Reporter Mayhew, of the Herald … seems to reflect little credit on Editor Bennett." [8] Some authors state that the practice began in or was popularized by Time . [4] [5] [7] [9] [10] Like the example above, early examples in Time were capitalized: "Ruskin's famed friend, Painter Sir John Millais". [7] However, now they are usually in lower case. The Chicago Manual of Style observes, "When a title is used in apposition before a personal name – that is, not alone and as part of the name but as an equivalent to it, usually preceded by the or by a modifier – it is considered not a title but rather a descriptive phrase and is therefore lowercased." [11] Meyer has compared the International Corpus of English with an earlier study to document the spread of the construction from American newspapers to those of other countries in the last two decades of the 20th century. In particular, during that time it became even more common in New Zealand and the Philippines than in the United States. He predicts that it is unlikely to appear in conversation. [4]

Meyer notes that "pseudo-titles" (as he calls them) rarely contain a modifying phrase after the initial noun phrase, that is, forms such as "MILF Vice Chairman for Political Affairs Al-Hajj Murad Ebrahim" for the head of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front are rare. Furthermore, they cannot begin with a genitive phrase; "Osias Baldivino, the bureau's litigation and prosecution division chief" cannot be changed to "bureau's litigation and prosecution division chief Osias Baldivino": "bureau's" would need to be removed. He also cites Randolph Quirk's principle of "end-weight", which says that weightier parts of sentences are better placed at the end of sentences or smaller structures. Thus pseudo-titles, which by definition go at the beginning, tend to be short. He notes that pseudo-titles in New Zealand and Philippine newspapers are much more likely to exceed five words than those in the United States and Britain. [4]

False titles are widely used in Nigerian English, capitalized and with a comma separating them from the person's name. This usage is considered incorrect in other countries. [12]

Controversy

Style guides and studies of language have differed strongly on whether the construction is correct:

Opposed to false titles

In 1965, Theodore Bernstein, a usage writer, strongly deprecated these "coined titles". He gave an example of "a legitimate title ... combined with an illegitimate one" in "Ohio Supreme Court Judge and former trial lawyer James Garfield", which he said was an inversion of the normal "James Garfield, Ohio Supreme Court Judge and former trial lawyer" that gained nothing but awkwardness. He cited the usual lower-casing of these phrases as evidence that those who write them realize they are not true titles. [5]

In 1987, Roy Reed, a professor of journalism, commented that such a sentence as, "This genteel look at New England life, with a formidable circulation of 1 million, warmly profiles Hartland Four Corners, Vt., resident George Seldes, 96", was "gibberish". He added that the phrase "right-wing spokesman Maj. Roberto D'Aubuisson" was ambiguous, as the reader could not tell whether D'Aubuisson was the single spokesman for the Salvadoran right wing or one of many. [13] In addition to placing the descriptive phrase after the name, "where it belongs", Reed suggested that if the phrase goes before the name, it should begin with a or the. [13] Kenneth Bressler, a usage writer, also recommended avoiding the construction and suggested additional ways of doing so in 2003. [14]

The only prescriptive comment in The Columbia Guide to Standard English (2015) is that these constructions "can be tiresome." [9] R. L. Trask, a linguist, used the phrase "preposed appositive" for constructions such as "the Harvard University paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould." In strong terms, he recommended including the initial the (and employing such constructions sparingly anyway). [6]

In 2004 another linguist, Geoffrey Pullum, addressed the subject while commenting on the first sentence of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code , which begins, "Renowned curator Jacques Saunière...." Pullum says that a sentence beginning with an "anarthrous occupational nominal premodifier" is "reasonable" in a newspaper, [15] and "It's not ungrammatical; it just has the wrong feel and style for a novel." He further commented that it sounds "like the opening of an obituary rather than an action sequence." False titles are peculiar to Brown's style and occur often in his body of work, Pullum claiming in 2004 that he has "never yet found anyone but Dan Brown using this construction to open a work of fiction." [10]

Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage agrees that the construction "presents no problem of understanding", and those who are not journalists "need never worry about it" in their writing. [7] Likewise, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993) classifies these constructions as "journalese". [9] In 2012 Philip B. Corbett of The New York Times wrote, "We try to avoid the unnatural journalistic mannerism of the 'false title' – that is, using a description or job designation with someone's name as if it were a formal title. So we don't refer to 'novelist Zadie Smith' or 'cellist Yo-Yo Ma'." [16] The 2015 edition of the paper's manual of style says:

Do not make titles out of mere descriptions, as in harpsichordist Dale S. Yagyonak. If in doubt, try the "good morning" test. If it is not possible to imagine saying, "Good morning, Harpsichordist Yagyonak," the title is false. [17]

In favor of false titles

In 2009, usage writer William Safire stated that the article "the" gives the title excessive emphasis and that it sounds strange to American speakers. [18] According to Bill Walsh, writing in 2004, The New York Times is the only American newspaper that forbids false titles. He considers that the alternative "may seem stilted, even wacky", because false titles are in widespread use. [19]

British usage

British style guides have in the past considered the construction not only journalese but an Americanism, [20] [21] or at least less "embedded" in British English. [22] The journal The Economist proscribes the use of the false title. [20] The style guide of the newspaper The Guardian advises against it. [23] As of 2022, the BBC style guide comments that the construction can avoid "unnecessary clutter". [24]

Related Research Articles

A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb – that is, the person or thing that undergoes the action or has its state changed. This contrasts with active voice, in which the subject has the agent role. For example, in the passive sentence "The tree was pulled down", the subject denotes the patient rather than the agent of the action. In contrast, the sentences "Someone pulled down the tree" and "The tree is down" are active sentences.

Singular <i>they</i> Gender-neutral English pronoun

Singular they, along with its inflected or derivative forms, them, their, theirs, and themselves, is a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. It typically occurs with an indeterminate antecedent, to refer to an unknown person, or to refer to every person of some group, in sentences such as:

A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in which an adverb or adverbial phrase separates the "to" and "infinitive" constituents of what was traditionally called the "full infinitive", but is more commonly known in modern linguistics as the to-infinitive. In the history of English language aesthetics, the split infinitive was often deprecated, despite its prevalence in colloquial speech. The opening sequence of the Star Trek television series contains a well-known example, "to boldly go where no man has gone before", wherein the adverb boldly was said to split the full infinitive, to go. Multiple words may split a to-infinitive, such as: "The population is expected to more than double in the next ten years."

A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities and may be used when referring to instances of a specific class. Some proper nouns occur in plural form, and then they refer to groups of entities considered as unique. Proper nouns can also occur in secondary applications, for example modifying nouns, or in the role of common nouns. The detailed definition of the term is problematic and, to an extent, governed by convention.

In grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses, which are called its conjuncts. That description is vague enough to overlap with those of other parts of speech because what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each language. In English, a given word may have several senses and in some contexts be a preposition but a conjunction in others, depending on the syntax. For example, after is a preposition in "he left after the fight" but a conjunction in "he left after they fought".

Adpositions are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations or mark various semantic roles. The most common adpositions are prepositions and postpositions.

A dangling modifier is a type of ambiguous grammatical construct whereby a grammatical modifier could be misinterpreted as being associated with a word other than the one intended. A dangling modifier has no subject and is usually a participle. A writer may use a dangling modifier intending to modify a subject while word order may imply that the modifier describes an object, or vice versa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English compound</span> Aspect of English grammar

A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme. The English language, like many others, uses compounds frequently. English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the semantic relationship of their components.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English usage controversies</span> Disputes over "correct" grammar and style

In the English language, there are grammatical constructions that many native speakers use unquestioningly yet certain writers call incorrect. Differences of usage or opinion may stem from differences between formal and informal speech and other matters of register, differences among dialects, and so forth. Disputes may arise when style guides disagree with each other, or when a guideline or judgement is confronted by large amounts of conflicting evidence or has its rationale challenged.

Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally noun phrases, are placed side by side so one element identifies the other in a different way. The two elements are said to be in apposition, and one of the elements is called the appositive, but its identification requires consideration of how the elements are used in a sentence.

Relative clauses in the English language are formed principally by means of relative words. The basic relative pronouns are who, which, and that; who also has the derived forms whom and whose. Various grammatical rules and style guides determine which relative pronouns may be suitable in various situations, especially for formal settings. In some cases the relative pronoun may be omitted and merely implied.

The term predicate is used in two ways in linguistics and its subfields. The first defines a predicate as everything in a standard declarative sentence except the subject, and the other defines it as only the main content verb or associated predicative expression of a clause. Thus, by the first definition, the predicate of the sentence Frank likes cake is likes cake, while by the second definition, it is only the content verb likes, and Frank and cake are the arguments of this predicate. The conflict between these two definitions can lead to confusion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English passive voice</span> Grammatical voice in the English language

In English, the passive voice is marked by a subject that is followed by a stative verb complemented by a past participle. For example:

The enemy was defeated. Caesar was stabbed.

A compound modifier is a compound of two or more attributive words: that is, two or more words that collectively modify a noun. Compound modifiers are grammatically equivalent to single-word modifiers and can be used in combination with other modifiers.

In traditional grammar, a subject complement is a predicative expression that follows a copula, which complements the subject of a clause by means of characterization that completes the meaning of the subject.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (MWDEU) is a usage dictionary published by Merriam-Webster, Inc., of Springfield, Massachusetts. It is currently available in a reprint edition (1994) ISBN 0-87779-132-5 or ISBN 978-0-87779-132-4.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Common English usage misconceptions</span> Beliefs about the use of the English language considered by others as wrong

This list comprises widespread modern beliefs about English language usage that are documented by a reliable source to be misconceptions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English nouns</span> Part of speech

English nouns form the largest category of words in English, both in the number of different words and how often they are used in typical texts. The three main categories of English nouns are common nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns. A defining feature of English nouns is their ability to inflect for number, as through the plural –s morpheme. English nouns primarily function as the heads of noun phrases, which prototypically function at the clause level as subjects, objects, and predicative complements. These phrases are the only English phrases whose structure includes determinatives and predeterminatives, which add abstract-specifying meaning such as definiteness and proximity. Like nouns in general, English nouns typically denote physical objects, but they also denote actions, characteristics, relations in space, and just about anything at all. Taken all together, these features separate English nouns from other lexical categories such as adjectives and verbs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English possessive</span> Possessive words and phrases in the English language

In English, possessive words or phrases exist for nouns and most pronouns, as well as some noun phrases. These can play the roles of determiners or of nouns.

Comprised of is an expression in English that means "composed of". This is thought by language purists to be improper because to "comprise" can already mean to "be composed of". By that definition, "comprised of" would be ungrammatical as it implies "composed of of". However, another widely accepted definition of to "comprise" is to "compose", hence the commonly accepted meaning of "comprised of" as "composed of".

References

  1. ↑ Garner, Bryan A. (2003), Garner's Modern American Usage , Oxford University Press, USA, pp.  789, ISBN   0-19-516191-2
  2. ↑ American Heritage Dictionary, Houghton Mifflin, 2009, retrieved 2009-11-05
  3. ↑ Brown, Lesley, ed. (1993), New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (NSOED), Oxford University Press, p.  1932, ISBN   0-19-861271-0
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Meyer, Charles F. (2002), "Pseudo-titles in the Press Genre of Various Components of the International Corpus of English", in Reppen, Randi; Fitzmaurice, Susan M.; Biber, Douglas (eds.), Using Corpora to Explore Linguistic Variation, John Benjamins Publishing Co., pp. 147–166, ISBN   90-272-2279-7 , retrieved 2009-05-27
  5. 1 2 3 Bernstein, Theodore M. (1965), The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage (2nd ed.), Simon and Schuster, p. 107, ISBN   0-684-82632-1 , retrieved 2009-05-23.
  6. 1 2 Trask, R. L. (2005), Say What You Mean! A Troubleshooter's Guide to English Style and Usage, David R. Godine, Publisher, pp. 216–217, ISBN   1-56792-263-5 , retrieved 2009-05-24.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated (1994), Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (2nd ed.), Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, p. 429, ISBN   0-87779-132-5 , retrieved 2009-05-23.
  8. ↑ The Tipster (June 20, 1893). "Paddock and Track". Town Topics. 29 (26): 20. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
  9. 1 2 3 Wilson, Kenneth G. (1993), The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, Columbia University Press, pp. 188–189, ISBN   978-0-231-06989-2 , retrieved 2009-05-23.
  10. 1 2 Pullum, Geoffrey (2004-11-07), Renowned Author Dan Brown Staggered Through His Formulaic Opening Sentence, Language Log , retrieved 2016-05-19.
  11. ↑ The University of Chicago Press (2003), The Chicago Manual of Style (sixteenth ed.), retrieved 2015-03-23(subscription required)
  12. ↑ Kperogi, Farooq A. (22 June 2015). Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World. Peter Lang. p. 118. ISBN   978-1-4331-2926-1.
  13. 1 2 Reed, Roy (1987-07-25), "Titles That Aren't Titles" , The New York Times, retrieved 2009-05-23
  14. ↑ Bressler, Kenneth (2003), The Workplace Writing Manual: Tips Designed to Stick, Wm. S. Hein Publishing, p. 60, ISBN   0-8377-3033-3 , retrieved 2009-05-24.
  15. ↑ Pullum, Geoffrey (2004-05-01), The Dan Brown code, Language Log, archived from the original on 2008-04-18, retrieved 2009-05-24.
  16. ↑ Corbett, Philip B. (20 November 2012). "False title". The New York Times.
  17. ↑ Siegal, Allan M. and William Connolly. "False titles", The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, Fifth edition, 2015.
  18. ↑ Safire, William (2009-07-15), "On Language: Vogue-Word Watch", The New York Times, retrieved 2009-07-19. A version of the article appeared in The New York Times , July 19, 2009, p. MM14 of the New York edition.
  19. ↑ Walsh, Bill (2004). The Elephants of Style: A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English. McGraw Hill Professional. p. 25. ISBN   978-0-07-144275-6.
  20. 1 2 Research Tools: Style Guide, The Economist, 2009, retrieved 2009-05-24
  21. ↑ Peters, Pam (2004), The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, Cambridge University Press, p.  536, ISBN   0-521-62181-X .
  22. ↑ Burchfield, R. W. (1996), The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, The Clarendon Press, p.  775, ISBN   0-19-869126-2
  23. ↑ "(Names) Guardian and Observer style guide". The Guardian . Retrieved 20 August 2022.
  24. ↑ BBC News style guide, BBC. Retrieved 2022-08-22. Under "Commas".[ dead link ]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.