Salary offered vs. offered salary

Question

A. The salary offered is $10,000.B. The offered salary is $10,000.1. Which of the above is correct?2. If both are OK, I think there is no difference. Would you agree?3. If I use USD instead of "quot;, where is its proper placement?... is USD 10,000.... is 10,000 USD4. Do you think it's redundant to add "quot; when USD is used in whichever is correct in #3?Please help. Thank you.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Hi,

I've put the phrases "offered salary" and "salary offered" into the search engine and got the following results:

1. The collocation "offered salary" - 557,000 results.

2. The collocation - "salary offered" - 1,6000,000 results.

Free_spirit · Answer

AnonymousA. The salary offered is $10,000.B. The offered salary is $10,000.1. Which of the above is correct?2. If both are OK, I think there is no difference. Would you agree?3. If I use USD instead of "quot;, where is its proper placement?... is USD 10,000.... is 10,000 USD4. Do you think it's redundant to add "quot; when USD is used in whichever is correct in #3?Please help. Thank you.

1. Both are 'ok' but I prefer A - "The salary offered" ... it sounds more like "the salary being offere" or "the salary that is offered".

2. There is no real difference that I can see, expect "salary offered" uses "offered" as a verb, and "offered salary" uses "offered" as an adjective (describing the noun). The essential meaning is "the salary we are offering for the position"

3. The Place of the USD is a matter of style. My preference is to use US$, instead of USD, and place it before the amount (US$10,000).

4. The use of the $ sign and USD does involve some redundancy. However, using the $ sign catches attention immediately. So if you place USD at the end, I still recommend using the $ sign, so that it clearly shows that you are talking about a dollar amount, not some other measurement (distance, time, weight, volume, etc).

Anonymous · Answer

free_spirit
AnonymousA. The salary offered is $10,000.B. The offered salary is $10,000.1. Which of the above is correct?2. If both are OK, I think there is no difference. Would you agree?3. If I use USD instead of "quot;, where is its proper placement?... is USD 10,000.... is 10,000 USD4. Do you think it's redundant to add "quot; when USD is used in whichever is correct in #3?Please help. Thank you.
1. Both are 'ok' but I prefer A - "The salary offered" ... it sounds more like "the salary being offere" or "the salary that is offered". 2. There is no real difference that I can see, expect "salary offered" uses "offered" as a verb, and "offered salary" uses "offered" as an adjective (describing the noun). The essential meaning is "the salary we are offering for the position"3. The Place of the USD is a matter of style. My preference is to use US$, instead of USD, and place it before the amount (US$10,000).4. The use of the $ sign and USD does involve some redundancy. However, using the $ sign catches attention immediately. So if you place USD at the end, I still recommend using the $ sign, so that it clearly shows that you are talking about a dollar amount, not some other measurement (distance, time, weight, volume, etc).

Hi,

How come?

The sentence "The salary offered is $10,000." has its verb 'is' as a verb, so how can the adjective 'offered' do the job of the verb here?

Free_spirit · Answer

Hi,

Actually, I was going to suggest searching via Google and see what was more common. As you can see though, "offered salary" still occurs over 500,000 times! That makes it "common usage".

Dimsumexpress · Answer

My opinion: They are both correct. Which is more apporpriate depends on the context.

The salary offered (by the company to me) is not what I expected. "Offerred" in this sentence is used as a past participle in a passive construction.

The offerred salary doesn't include the travel allowance. "Offerred" is used as a participle adjective.

Free_spirit · Answer

Anonymous How come? The sentence "The salary offered is $10,000." has its verb 'is' as a verb, so how can the adjective 'offered' do the job of the verb here?

Hi, the verb is describing the noun in the case of "offered salary", and is therefore the past participle of "to offer". It is not describing the subject (which is the company that is offering the salary). Think of it in another way. Salary is the noun. If it was a particular colour, we could say "the red salary". That is using an adjective to describe it. In a more realistic way, we could say, "the CEO of the company has the highest salary."

In the case of the original question, which salary are we talking about? The salary that is being offered. So, we have used the verb "to offer" to describe the salary, and specify that we refer to the the salary that is being offered for the current position.

Note also, by saying "the offered salary" the author is also using the passive voice, rather than active voice. This is common in formal (such as business) types of writing. It is often less clear who is doing what to whom. Hence, for clarity, writing in active voice (generally with subject + verb + object) makes it very clear what is happening. Here is an active voice version of the original sentence:

"Our company (subject) is offering (verb) the salary (object) of US $10,000."

I hope this clarifies it for you. It is common in various languages that verbs can be used to modify nouns (adjectival), as well as modifying other verbs (adverbial). Have a look at the Wikipedia entry for particles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participle

Anonymous · Answer

Hi,

I'm the original poster. Thank you very much, free_spirit and dimsumexpress, for your helpful responses.

free_spirit3. The Place of the USD is a matter of style. My preference is to use US$, instead of USD, and place it before the amount (US$10,000).

In the case of other currencies, for example, sterling or pounds, is it OK to write as follows, the same as you did with "US$10,000"?

GB£10,000

or is it better to write it as follows?

GBP £10,000

I think GBP stands for Great Britain Pound. I'm not sure, though.

Free_spirit · Answer

AnonymousGB£10,000
or is it better to write it as follows?
GBP £10,000
I think GBP stands for Great Britain Pound. I'm not sure, though.

Again, it depends on style, and also consistency. If you are using USD in the same document, then I suggest GBP for consistency. That is because they are both three letter abbreviations.

A quick Google search and it appears that GBP is the abbreviation for pounds sterling.

I use the website xe.com for currency conversions (I have no affiliation with them and there are plenty of other similar sites). XE and other sites list the three letter currency codes (e.g. EUR = euros, CAD = Canadian Dollars).

Anonymous · Answer

OK, thank you, free_spirit. This is clear to me now.

Thank you, too, for the website where I can check the currency codes.

Salary offered vs. offered salary

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions