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Prior to/Before
Prior Offense
By Evan Jenkins
That’s the way to use “prior” — as an adjective. As a preposition, “prior to” is very close to non-English, however ubiquitous.
“Prior to 1965, virtually no one was speaking of abortion as a prospective right.” What in heaven’s name is wrong with “before”? We don’t have to follow the lead of such folk as football referees, who invariably say “False start, prior to the snap...” Or of the academics, doctors, lawyers, and bureaucrats of all stripes, public and private, for whom “prior to” is mandatory because “before” is plain English, and they can’t have that.
Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage tolerates “prior to” in cases where the connection between two events is “more essential than the simple time relation,” but otherwise consigns it to the dread category of Formal Words, along with “following” as a substitute for “after.” (From this seat, “following” sometimes seems useful in connoting immediacy or causality, but that may be a character flaw).
Deposing on after/following and before/prior to in his delightfully erudite book “Words on Words,” the late John Bremner, a legendary teacher of journalism at the University of Kansas, asked: “If you don’t use posterior to, why use prior to ? Would you say ‘Posterior to the game, we had a few drinks’? So why say, ‘Prior to the game, we had a few drinks’? Make it: ‘Before and after (and even during) the game, we had a few drinks.’“ We can all drink to that.
CJR Nov./Dec. 1996
Addendum, 8/6/03
An extreme example, though not ground-breaking for sports announcers: “Immediately following the conclusion of tonight’s broadcast...”
CJR
