Such As vs. Such Clauses As

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, this is Jeff Raymer in Grapevine.

Grapevine what?

Oh, Texas.

Hello, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Texans, man. They always think everyone knows where they’re from.

Well, yeah, don’t you?

I do know Grapevine now that you mention it.

What’s on your mind, Jeff?

How can we help?

This morning, I was out in the garden, and I was planting things such as tomatoes, or tomatoes, depending on how you want to say it.

Tomatoes? However, I was not planting such things as potatoes or potatoes. And this is the thing that I’ve called you about because it just drives me batty.

I hear even journalists saying it that way. During my tenure at NPR, I covered such stories as. But I contend that they should say I covered stories such as. Am I wrong about that?

So you don’t like the such and the as being broken up?

I don’t.

Jeff, it’s interesting that you mentioned journalists, actually, because when I worked at a daily newspaper in Kentucky, the state’s largest newspaper, years ago, this edict came down. And I don’t know if it was the AP style book or just something in-house, but they told us that we had to separate those words all of a sudden.

Oh, you had to put something between such and as.

Yes. And it felt really weird to me, Jeff.

Yeah.

You were required to say something like, I remember such things as pet rocks, dilly boppers, and mood rings, right? So it’s such things as, or I remember such fads as, or I remember such people as.

Yes.

Or it’s not, I remember people such as Martha, Grant, and Jaff.

Exactly.

Interesting. And it was really strange because I tried to train myself to do that, but if I slipped up, the copy editors always changed it.

Really interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, that sounds like a—

In the sentence that you said there, isn’t the object the people?

I remember people. Don’t you remember people? You don’t remember such.

Well, such is behaving as a determiner. It’s almost an adjective here. So such is actually modifying the things of the people. When you have such noun as, that noun is being modified by such.

Such is a really crazy word, and it doesn’t have more than one use. Has got, I think it’s like five different uses in English. And you’ve got to be really careful. And sometimes they’re hard to separate out.

So in this particular case. And so to go further up the conversation tree and kind of look at the bird’s eye view here, Martha, I would say that either use is fine. I would say that either use is fine.

Either, either. We pronounce that word differently and both are fine. But I have seen people talk about having been taught that only one of them was correct.

Yeah.

That you should say you ought to listen to such composers as Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms.

That sounds a little stilted to me.

It sounds stilted to me, and it’s breaking up that idiomatic use of such as. I’ve got to say, Jeff, I kind of like the sound to my ears, things such as rocks, pets, and cars.

I much prefer that. It sounds more natural to me. But I think the other thing that we’re talking about here is the question of whether there is some kind of fine, subtle distinction.

To the best of my knowledge, even the most prickly of usage mavens doesn’t rail against such as, either form of such as, broken up or as a unit.

Yeah, I’m not talking so much about usage mavens, but is there a subtle difference between saying, I think you should listen to such composers as Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach, as opposed to, I think you should listen to renowned composers such as.

Are you talking more about the composers? Are you talking about the individual components of that list?

Interesting. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, there’s a little more specific, though.

A little bit, but it’s such a fine distinction.

Yeah, and punctuation. You know, Jeff, what about the punctuation here?

Oh, no. I’m feeling like a comma would add some clarity here, depending on which kind of such as you wanted to use.

Are you familiar with that joke, let’s eat, grandma?

Yeah.

The punctuation is very important here.

That’s right. You want that comma after eat, for sure.

Right. I want to hear from English teachers, and I know we have a slew of them. Are you still teaching a rule? Are you teaching a rule at all about such as and whether or not it should or should not be broken up?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

And I also want to hear from journalists and their editors, particularly their copy editors. Do you have an in-house rule about this?

Send it to email, words@waywordradio.org.

Jeff, we’re going to get to the bottom of this, all right?

Thanks.

You guys are awesome. I love you.

You’re doing our best.

Thank you very much. I’m excited you asked the question. I can’t wait to hear the answers.

Me too.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

That number again is 877-929-9673.