Hoping this is the right place: what is up with the former and the latter?

First, if this is the wrong place for this a mod is welcome to move it.

Why is "the former" and "the latter" plastered all over the site? I get it being useful in cases of referring to something described in a spoiler tag, but other than that it just makes every single sentence containing them more awkward to read. It's to the point that egregious got to before that got a mockery page. Are you guys cool if I change instances as I see them?

It's common English. "Former" = "thing earlier on a list", "latter" = "thing later on a list".

No, that's what I meant. Should have said "pair", not "list".

Edited by StarSword on Jan 26th 2024 at 9:30:10 AM

That's a common misuse. If you've just mentioned two things, then "the former" is the first one and "the latter" is the second. If the list contains more than two, it should be "first" and "last".

Yes it's common, but what I'm arguing is that seeing it so frequently makes sentences more awkward to read. Again, like with egregious, it often seems like whoever wrote it just wanted to show off that they knew what it meant rather than if it works in the sentence.

If you want to contrast two elements, there isn't really much of a better way to do it. It's not like egregious, where the use of the words is entirely redundant—you have the choice of former and latter, or first and last, and there is absolutely no way to guarantee that if you're experiencing a random segment of wiki that you won't keep seeing them, even if someone were to mandate variety.

Yeah, I’m not sure if I quite get the issue here. It’s always good to diversify your vocabulary while writing, but I have no idea what’s remotely awkward about using “former” and “latter”. Personal preference, sure, but there’s no point in trying to remove these words en masse based on how one feels about them.

...OK this was clearly a waste of time, someone just lock it.