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User:Coder Dan/Bad English

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Coder Dan (talk | contribs) at 17:14, 28 January 2019 ("As such": new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Malformed conjunctions and disjunctions

Disagreement between subject and introductory adjective phrase

An adjective phrase at the beginning of a sentence modifies the subject of the sentence, not something tangentially related to it.

Introductory adjective phrase applies to something in previous sentence

The second sentence in each of these examples is incoherent when read alone.

"As such"

You can think of the word "such" as an approximate synonym of "that". "As such", then, means something like "as that", where "that" refers to a description that defines members of some group that a person or thing belongs to, or some kind of job or function that the person or thing fulfills. The difference is that "such" may refer to a kind of thing, whereas "that" always refers to a specific, individual thing.

For example, the President of the United States is the Commander In Chief of the US armed forces, and as such, he is authorized to direct US military actions. "As such" in this sentence means "as Commander In Chief".

A good translation of "as such" is "in that capacity". The phrase does not mean "because of that" or "for that reason", despite widespread misuse in that sense.

Pretentious or pseudosophisticated misuse of expressions

These expressions should be avoided where not specifically applicable. They provide no extra information and can be confusing.

  • "as well as": should usually be "and".
  • "amid": sometimes misused for "during"
  • "not A nor B": double negative