Pet peeve

[cactuswatcher]

My latest gripe with the news culture copying mistakes from every other news outlet is the misuse of the word "after."

From my local TV station's website, Pedestrian suffers life-threatening injuries after being struck by vehicle.

How horrible! First the person was hit by a vehicle, then afterward suffered life-threatening injuries? ...Of course not... For God's sake stop using 'after' plus a progressive tense as a synonym for 'when' plus a simple past tense. The injuries didn't happen after. They happened when!

Note the difference between this and a similarly constructed sentence, "Pedestrian dies after being struck by vehicle..." It's a very possible sequence of events, where the sentence quoted above is very unlikely.

Comments

[conuly]

I'm not sure that "when" conveys the same meaning, though. The injuries are presumably caused by the accident, not just more or less concurrent with it.

[atpo_onm]

Good point. Although...

... if one truly longed to be nit-picky, depending on the time interval chosen, "after" could be accurately used. For example, it was probably at least a fair number of microseconds after the pedestrian was initially physically contacted by some portion of the vehicle before the injuries occurred. Who knows, perhaps even milliseconds?

Right? Yes?

( Sneaks away now, or after a few picoseconds...)

;-)

[jesuswasbatman]

It's another way of reducing the apparent responsibility of the person who hit them.

[shadowkat]

I feel an overwhelming urge to send you Newsday articles. Their copy-edit department is apparently non-existent.