False title:
A false, coined, fake, bogus or pseudo-title, also called a Time-style
adjective and an anarthrous nominal premodifier, is a kind of
appositive phrase before a noun. It is said to formally resemble 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".
Some usage writers condemn this construction, 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.
Terminology
In the description of a false title as an anarthrous
nominal premodifier, "anarthrous" means "lacking an article", and
"nominal" is used in the sense "of the nature of a noun". Other
phrases for the usage include "pseudo title", "coined title" and
"preposed appositive".
In "Professor Herbert Marcuse", "Professor" is a title, while in
"famed New Left philosopher Herbert Marcuse", "famed New Left
philosopher" has the same syntax, with the omitted at the beginning,
but is not a title. The linguist Charles F. Meyer has stated 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").
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." Some authors state that
the practice began in or was popularized by Time
magazine. Like the example above, early examples in
Time were capitalized: "Ruskin's famed friend, Painter Sir John
Millais". 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." 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.
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.
Controversy
Style guides and studies of language have differed
strongly on whether the construction is correct:
Opposed to false titles
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.
Roy Reed, a professor of journalism, has 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. 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. The usage writer Kenneth Bressler also recommended
avoiding the construction and suggested additional ways of doing
so.
The only prescriptive comment in The Columbia Guide to Standard
English is that these constructions "can be tiresome." 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).
Another linguist, Geoffrey Pullum, addressed the subject in comments
on the first sentence of 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, and "It's not ungrammatical; it just has the wrong
feel and style for a novel." Merriam Webster's Dictionary of
English Usage agrees that the construction is "highly unlikely outside
journalism". Likewise, The Columbia Guide to Standard American
English classifies these constructions as "journalese". 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'." 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.
In favor of false titles
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
suggests that the reason for the construction is that it identifies a
person concisely. It also says that, contrary to the claims of some
critics, it is perfectly comprehensible. The usage pundit William
Safire stated that the article "the" gives the title excessive
emphasis and that it sounds strange to American speakers.
British usage
British style guides have in the past considered the
construction not only journalese but an Americanism, or at
least less "embedded" in British English. The style guides of the
British daily newspaper The Guardian and the weekly journal The
Economist both proscribe the use of the false title, but the
BBC's guidelines for webpages, as of 2015, comment that use of the
construction can avoid "unnecessary clutter", although in general the
guide favors the traditional form, avoiding the false title.
