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Anonymous Posted 12 years ago
Essay & Composition Writing

The use of former and latter

I came across a thread earlier and a commenter said that the word use of the following statement is wrong:
"..the use of different materials achieves 2 purposes: the former to assess the method, the latter to provide a comparison."
The commenter then said:

"The following is an example of the use of 'former':

Tom and were both heroes but only the former is remembered today."

I see nothing wrong with it and I would like some enlightenment.

  

Top answer

I agree with Yoong Liat, the original commentator. Former means the first thing named , latter means the last thing named . You must have two named things in order to use former and latter .

— Blue Jay

  • I agree with Yoong Liat, the original commentator.
  • Former means the first thing named , latter means the last thing named .
  • You must have two named things in order to use former and latter .
  • The original sentence does not name two things.
  • His example Tom and were both heroes but only the former is remembered today is a good example of former and latter correctly used.
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6 Answers
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I agree with Yoong Liat, the original commentator. Former means the first thing named, latter means the last thing named. You must have two named things in order to use former and latter. The original sentence does not name two things. His example Tom and were both heroes but only the former is remembered today is a good example of
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By the way, welcome to the Forum. Emotion: smile
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Typo. Should be
eg Tom and Fred were both heroes but only the former is remembered today.
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I think the second name was automatically deleted because it sounds dirty. It's the nickname for Richard. LOLEmotion: big smile
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I typed my post quoting YL's post from 2007, and the auto-censor deleted one of the names from the original. I forgot it won't let us say D i c k, even though it has deleted it from one of my posts before (where I used it equally appropriately). If it had done its usual trick of replacing the word with *** I would have known what was going on.
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