as such

[Peter A. McGraw]

When I worked at the German Information Center, I was forever changing "as
such"s like that in copy that came from translators in Bonn.  I assumed
that some writer who churned out these things (I forget now what kind of
document the "things" were) had a fondness for this construction and the
translator mechanicically passed it through--though German "Als solches,"
would be just as "dangling" in the same context as the English "as such"
was.  But I don't recall running across it anywhere else.  I wonder if it's
widespread in Britain and is now making its way over here.  Some other
problems I had with Bonn-produced translations turned out to be traceable
to Anglicisms.

Peter Mc.

--On Fri, Apr 21, 2000 1:47 PM -0400 Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM wrote:

> Has anyone else noticed the (increasing, I think) use of "as such" to mean
> simply "as a result"? Witness this mailing from the webmaster to the
> staff of a volunteer organization I belong to:
>
>>>>>>
> Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 09:40:07 -0400
>
>      [...]
>
> I have just discovered that while I am away our building will
> be losing power for an hour and a half on Wednesday, April 26th
> from 9 AM to 10:30 AM.
>
> As such, ARISIA.ORG will be off line from sometime Tuesday evening
> until about 10:30 or so Wednesday morning.
> <<<<<
>
> -- Mark Mandel
>    Arisia filkczar-abdicate



****************************************************************************
                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu