I was reading a draft document and encountered a sentence along these lines:
The below table shows costs for three different options.
This phrasing feels weird to me; I'd be inclined to recast as "The table below..."
But this feels okay to me:
The above table shows costs for three different options.
Is there actually some linguistic distinction that makes "above table" more acceptable than "below table"? Or is this just my instincts misfiring?
Examples of below used as a pre-head modifier in a noun phrase are rarer than those of above, but are not unheard of, and apparently it is becoming more popular.
Sir, we have received in the office the below number of signatures, petitioning for government support of Mr: Eric Heffer's Bill for the Abolition of Hare Coursing as a result of a single advertisement in each of the following newspapers (British Parliament, Bill Hansard, House of Commons, 1967)
The commission assumes that the cost of U. S. engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq will decrease significantly by 2020. The below figure is based on a projected estimate of thirty thousand combined troops in both countries. (Richard Dorment, Esquire, 2010 Vol. 154, Iss. 4; pg. 156)
However, tickets have already sold out for the weekend so you may have to get started to think about next year, if reading the below list is filling you with envy. (Cal Byrne, Irish Mirror)
Universal Credit mainly takes into account one’s expenses and income to decide the rate they will receive. To claim, Britons must meet all of the below criteria (Liverpool Echo)
Hits in the News on the Web corpus for the last few years of 'the below NOUN'
At least one dictionary has caught on with Merriam-Webster listing below as an adjective.
written or discussed lower on the same page or on a following page
the below list
Ngrams confirms this particular string's increasing popularity.
On checking, the two words are not perfect antonyms: "above" is recognised as an adjective in the Cambridge Dictionary, but "below" is not.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/above
above adverb, adjective (ON PAGE)
When used in a piece of writing, "above" means higher on the page, or on a previous page: Please send the articles to the address given above. The letter was sent to the above address.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/below
[no comparable entry here]
From Forum.Word Reference,com (selected comments):
The Columbia Guide to Standard American Usage says
There's nothing wrong with the above address, the statement above, and the like, except perhaps for a bit of stiffness, especially when repeated as formulas. But make sure that both adjectival and noun uses are appropriate to the context, and be aware that Edited English dislikes them for their imprecision.
The American Heritage Dictionary, which has a panel of people that it considers to be experts on American style and usage, says [that even the above figure is not accepted by all]:
The use of above as an adjective or noun in referring to a preceding text is most common in business and legal writing. In general writing its use as an adjective (the above figure) is accepted by a majority of the Usage Panel, but its use as a noun (read the above) is accepted by only a minority.
...
It may be correct in theory, but I doubt many native speakers would write it. Google searches for the below picture and the picture below turn up over 100 times as many hits for the latter as for the former. ... The below picture had 2.4 million Google hits. So the below picture is widely used but less widely so than the picture below.
I'd echo that 'the below N' is widely used, but less widely than 'the N below', but that the gap is narrower with 'the above N' and 'the N above'. But 'the above N' is seen as grammatical by many, 'the below N' by less Anglophones.
But 'the below N' is becoming more idiomatic. English in flux.
