User:JerryFriedman/False title (English usage)

A false, coined, fake or bogus title, also called a Time-style adjective, is a appositive phrase that resembles a title but is not one. For instance, in "Professor Juan Maldacena", "professor" is a title, while in "Argentine physicist Juan Maldacena", "Argentine physicist" has the same syntax but is not a title. This construction has been condemned by many usage writers.

For instance, Theodore Bernstein called these phrases "coined titles" and 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.

The Columbia Guide to Standard American English classifies these constructions as "journalese". Its only comment is that they may become "tiresome".

Many authors state that the practice began or was popularized by Time magazine. Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (MWDEU) gives an early example from Time (coincidentally in the next item after "false title") that shows that such identifications were once capitalized: "Ruskin's famed friend, Painter Sir John Millais". However, now they are in lower case&mdash;a point Bernstein cites as showing that writers realize these phrases are not true titles.

MWDEU says that the construction is "highly unlikely outside journalism" and suggests that the reason for it is that it identifies a person concisely. It also says that, contrary to the claims of some critics, it is perfectly comprehensible. However, the journalism professor Roy Reed claimed 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&mdash;or, for that matter, whether El Salvador had a single right wing or many factions. 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".

As MWDEU notes in the passage quoted above, these phrases originally applied only to people. However, they are now used for many other things, as in "Hit British film Slumdog Millionaire has won the top prize at the Academy Awards".

"She also helmed notorious disaster Ishtar," or "Welsh-language magazine Golwg was promptly sent photographs of the offending sign by a number of its readers."