Author Topic: In & After  (Read 4086 times)

Miss Mae

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In & After
« on: April 27, 2014, 02:37:32 PM »
Was it right that the headline below used in instead of after? Why should it be so?

Obama is the first American leader to visit Malaysia in decades.

Joe Carillo

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Re: In & After
« Reply #1 on: April 28, 2014, 10:40:30 AM »
Yes, the preposition “in” is used correctly rather than “after” in this headline that you presented: “Obama is the first American leader to visit Malaysia in decades.”

Recall that in the rules of usage for prepositions that establish relationships in time, “after” is used with events that happen later than another event or point of time, as in “The overseas worker came home only after the holidays.” In the headline you presented, no earlier event is referred to, so the preposition “after” can’t be used.

But why use “in”?

It’s the convention in English to use “in” with months, years, decades, and centuries as points of time or as periods of time.

Usage of “in” with months, years, decades, and centuries as points of time: “The famous writer was born in April [in 1946, in the 1940s, in the 20th century].”

Usage of “in” with months, years, decades, and centuries as periods of time: “It was the first time the company defaulted in its loan payments in 25 years.” Of course, if the writer or speaker couldn’t precisely establish or recall the number of years, there’s no choice but to drop the number of years and just use the indeterminate “years” instead: “It was the first time the company defaulted in its loan payments in years.”

The same thing actually happened in the case of that headline about President Obama’s visit to Malaysia. Evidently due to space limitations for the headline, it had to drop the precise number of years from the time an American president last visited Malaysia. Indeed, the late Lyndon B. Johnson was the last U.S. president to visit Malaysia, going to that country in 1966 at the height of the Vietnam War. Had there been enough headline space for the number of decades since that time, the headline would likely have been written more precisely as follows:  “Obama is the first American leader to visit Malaysia in almost five decades.” Alternatively: “Obama is the first American leader to visit Malaysia in almost 50 years.”   

Now that we’re on the subject of the usage of prepositions that establish relationships in time, we might as well review the other uses of “in” in this respect:

“In” is used with the following times of the day: “morning,” “afternoon,” “evening”: “She waters her roses in the morning [in the afternoon, in the evening].”

“In” is used with dates that do not carry the specific day: “The Spanish explorer reached the Philippines in March 1521.” (When the exact date is indicated, on the other hand, recall that the preposition is changed from “in” to “on”: “The Spanish explorer reached the Philippines on March 17,1521.”

RELATED READING IN THE FORUM ABOUT PREPOSITIONS:
Lesson #8 – Specific Rules for Preposition Usage

Miss Mae

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Re: In & After
« Reply #2 on: April 28, 2014, 02:08:28 PM »
Thank you, Sir!