As of
June 9th, 2009 by Monkey
I am wondering how to use the phrase ‘as of’ correctly. I learnt from my daily email communications with native English speakers that the phrase could mean “from”, “on/at” or “by the end of”. However, the last sense was not found in Oxford English Dictionary or Merriam Webster’s online edition.
That made me quite puzzled. Examples may speak louder than theories.
“As of yesterday, we had finished three tasks.”
Is this usage correct and does it mean the same thing as “by the end of yesterday, we had finished three tasks”?
Thanks.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 8:48 am and is filed under Usage.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
We (i.e. the creators of Pain in The English) developed a series of iPhone apps to teach preschool kids how to recognize letters and words. (My wife developed the characters and I did the coding.) Our own 4-year old daughter has been enjoying them. They are now available on Apple's App Store. You can search for "bitskis" on your iPhone, or visit the official website at bitskis.com.
If you have kids and own an iPhone, please check it out. It's $2.
I don’t think it’s incorrect, but it sounds awkward to me because “as of” usually implies that you sampled a moment of time to see a status of something. In other words, I interpret “as of” as “a particular point in time.” For instance:
“As of March 14th, 2009, my stock portfolio was worth $123,456.”
It’s measuring or sampling something at a particular point in time. The reason why “As of yesterday, we had finished three tasks” sounds awkward to me is because “had finished” implies a duration of time, not a moment in time.
I don’t think this usage sounds awkward. It would be used when someone was in the middle of a project (for example) and wanted to give an update on a portion of it being completed.
“The group has 12 tasks to complete by Friday. As of Wednesday, we had completed three tasks. We will need to get four tasks done per day to finish the project.”
Wow, this has ballooned into several issues. First, your question, does “as of yesterday…” mean the same thing as “by the end of yesterday…”? Well, yes and no. I don’t think that the words “as of” specifically mean “by the end of”; however, simple logic dictates that if something happens on a particular day, then it must happen by the end of that day. Something that happened yesterday can’t have happened after the end of yesterday, can it? Otherwise, it would have happened today, not yesterday, right? So in your case, “by the end of…” really means the same thing.
Next, Dyske’s comment about “had finished” compared to, I suppose, just “finished”. I don’t think it’s an issue about durations vs. moments of time. Rather, it’s an issue of the type of past tense. “Finished” is the simple past tense; “had finished” is the simple past perfect tense. The simple past perfect tense is used to describe something that happens before something else. The example sentence would make sense using “had” if it looked something like this: “As of yesterday, we had finished three tasks, then Bill quit”, meaning both things happened as of yesterday, but Bill quit some time after we finished the three tasks. I don’t know that it’s wrong, per se, but using “had” without specifying a second event does leave the reader to wonder, hmmm, what else happened afterwards (but before now) that you’re not telling me?
Also note, sometimes “as of” is equivalent to “on”, but not in this case. For example, “On Monday, we completed three tasks” means all three tasks were done on Monday. But, “as of Monday, we completed three tasks” only means that they were done on or before Monday. I suppose one could make a case that at least one task would have to be done on Monday, but not all three (I purposely didn’t use “yesterday” because “on yesterday” is not commonly said, but I think I illustrated the same point).
You mentioned “on/at”, but “as of” can also mean “starting on” or “ending on” and is sometimes the equivalent of “by”.
On another note…I don’t believe “learnt” is an English word. Should it not be “I learned from my daily …..”?
Learnt is a UK variant of learned, see e.g.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=45245&dict=CALD
I believe that “as of” means “from this day on” while “on this date” is expressed by “as at”. I might be wrong about this as I am not a native speaker .
According to Webster’s Dictionary, “as of” is a preposition “used to indicate a time or date at which something begins or ends”; “takes effect as of July 1″ is the example given.
Matt, I am not sure I have ever heard “as at” used in the manner you describe.
I have another example that doesn’t seem to fit the explanations above. “This e-mail is to serve as notice that as of July 1,2009 so and so will no longer be residing at 1773 Hawaii Dr. E.”. I read it as the person will be out before the date stated not at the end of the date stated.