This is the Business English Podcast, episode 303, preceding, previous, or prior, how to know the difference.
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Hey, Aubrey, how's everything going today?
I'm great. How are you, Lindsay?
Good. Excited to be on the Business English Podcast, but let's not talk about business.
Let's talk about vacations.
Tell me of all of your previous vacations, meaning, I guess, any time.
Which was your favorite?
I think Maui when I went to Hawaii.
It was probably my favorite vacation of all time.
Oh, love that. I love this.
This is a great question for coworkers, right?
We talk about vacations a lot.
It seems counterintuitive, right?
You're not at work. You're talking about the time you can leave work, but it's a great way to connect with coworkers.
When you can vacation, where do you go?
Oh, but it makes total sense.
We're stuck behind a desk.
That's what we want to be doing.
We want to be thinking about that next vacation and being in the sunshine on a beach.
The question really is, why didn't you ask me of all your preceding vacations, which was your favorite?
That would be incorrect, right?
Didn't feel quite right.
We're going to find out exactly why that is so that our listeners can ask these questions too, correctly, but first guys hit the follow button.
Aubrey, why should they hit follow?
Yes, you guys do not want to be missing any of our amazing business English episodes.
We share vocabulary, role plays, strategies, so much great info here.
If you work in English, you might want to make sure you follow so that all of the episodes drop right into your queue.
Yes, and we have amazing listeners that send us questions.
We love to base your episodes, your questions, our episodes off of your questions.
So send them in to support at allearsenglish.com.
Aubrey, would you read the question for today?
Yes, this is from... How would you pronounce this name?
You have been to Japan, Lindsay, so you would probably know.
I would say Akane. Probably Akane.
Could be wrong, but I have a feeling.
Yes. Okay, so it's hi, Lindsay.
What you're doing well.
I'm Akane from Japan. I've been a huge fan of your podcast since the pandemic started, and I've learned so much from it.
Even though I haven't been to any English-speaking countries, listening to you always motivates me.
Big thanks to you and your team for all the hard work.
I love that, first of all.
That is so great. I love the review.
Yes, we love that. We love that.
Long time listener, right?
Yes, and then the question.
I have a quick question about the difference between preceding and previous.
When should I use preceding in daily conversation, or is it only for formal situations?
Thanks a lot in advance.
Such a great question. Such a high-level question, isn't it?
It's quite high level. Absolutely.
Yeah. Especially when we start thinking about what's too formal for daily conversations, it's interesting to think about business English as well.
Proceeding is very formal.
In daily conversations, we're more likely to say last, former, maybe previous.
Preceding, I feel like I hear more often at work.
Okay, yeah, for sure. But we also know, though, that at work we use formal, informal, and semi-formal English.
So we'll let you guys know about all of these and when it's okay to be a little more formal, a little more informal.
Absolutely. So let's go into...
Yeah, should we start then with that preceding?
Yeah, we're going to share three different terms today.
Preceding and previous, which Akane asked about.
And then a very similar word, prior.
So you can know how to use all of these.
They do have slightly different meanings and when to use them.
Which formal situations would they be, or informal?
Which situations would they be appropriate?
I love it. So let's start with number one, which is preceding.
So what exactly does this mean, Aubrey?
Yeah, it means occurring immediately before.
So this is why you wouldn't say of all your preceding vacations, no.
You could say, you know, at your...
During your preceding vacation, then you're meaning the one immediately before the one you're on now, right?
Maybe we're in Hawaii and you're like, well, during your preceding vacation, what happened?
And so that would grammatically make sense, but it would be very formal.
So in just like a daily conversation, instead you'd say during your last vacation.
Yeah, exactly. A little bit weird to add preceding in there in an informal conversation.
I would hear this more in a meeting, a presentation.
Exactly. You might say, let's go back to the preceding agenda item for a moment.
Exactly. And this just means the one immediately before the one we're talking about right now.
And this would feel very normal.
It's a more formal situation.
We're at work, we're elevating our language.
Then we'll definitely say preceding.
And maybe we have a physical agenda for the meeting, right?
And so people are going to look down at their paper.
Okay, we're going back to this.
It's much more disjointed and less casual, for sure.
Exactly. Yeah. Or you might say, if we look at the preceding slide again, you'll notice what a drastic change we saw.
And of course you could say the last agenda item, the last slide, meaning the one immediately before, but we're using preceding here to uplevel our language a bit.
What about spelling? What do we have to know because we're saying preceding, it sounds like, what could we easily get confused with?
Yeah, because when it's spelled preceding, but when we say it, it just sounds like preceding, which is another word spelled differently with an O proceeding, which is a course of action.
And that's these two verbs, proceed and precede sound the same when we speak.
They both sound like precede for most, at least American English speakers.
So you do want to be careful when spelling to make sure you're using the correct one.
And it's tricky because both of these words could be in the same meeting, right?
Like your boss could say, you know, please proceed with the plan.
Right. That is the proceedings, right?
Or the proceeding agenda item.
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I'm already getting off to a bad start on the meeting, right?
Not good. Exactly. So watch out for that.
Just a flag there. Okay.
Are we ready for number two?
Yes. Previous. Previous, which does have a different meaning.
It means occurring at some point before.
So it means different, you know, it doesn't mean the one right before like proceeding, which is more specific.
Previous is just at any time in the past.
Yeah. So I like the use of a previous something, right?
So in a previous meeting, we shared the need to cut costs because again, like Aubrey said, we don't know which previous meeting we don't know if it was last Wednesday or the Wednesday before that.
It was just a previous meeting.
Exactly. And this can save time.
This is where sometimes it's TMI.
If someone takes even 10 seconds to try and remember the date of that previous meeting or say something specific about it, it doesn't matter.
So this is a great time saver to instead just say in a previous meeting, this happened.
And I think our listeners know what you mean by TMI, but just as a bonus in case anyone doesn't know what that acronym is, Aubrey, what does that mean?
Love it. It means too much information.
Everyone knows that person who's telling a story and then they start talking to someone and they say their mom's name and where they were from and they just share more information that's needed.
Extra details that don't move along what you're saying.
And this can happen at work too.
If we're sharing any details that aren't needed, we're in a hurry.
We don't have time. We want to just share what's important.
Yeah. I mean, people can get reputations for being epic storytellers where they just go on and on.
And it's not usually a good thing.
It's not usually a good thing.
Right. And at work too, you know, we know that person that shares unnecessary details and we're all in a hurry.
We have a million things on our to do list.
Don't be that person. Don't share extra details that are unnecessary.
Yes. Over explaining. Yeah, for sure.
So next example, our previous, uh-huh.
Go ahead. Our previous idea was to use word of mouth advertising, but now we've decided to hire a marketing company.
Okay. So we're sharing what you had decided in the past.
So we just say our previous idea, you may have had several ideas since then.
Doesn't matter. The idea at some point in the past was this and now we're sharing what we've changed to.
Yeah. So it's being a little less specific, not based on a timeline or an order of things.
Right. Exactly. Again, time saving, right?
You don't need to say these are all the ideas we had in the past and no, it doesn't matter.
And then we thought of this and then we thought of this and then we thought of this.
No. Good. We're going to be concise here.
Get this meeting over. This is how meetings end up going too long, right?
Which is what people don't like when meetings go on and on.
It's because people add too many details.
They over explain. Exactly.
And then we want to share a synonym for previous, which is prior.
It has the same meaning as previous.
I feel like it's a slight bit more formal.
Yeah. And so sometimes I will use it this at work instead of previous.
These same examples, I might say in a prior meeting, we share the need or in a prior meeting, we assigned tasks.
Yes. So prior to this decision, we weren't sure what direction to take, but now we know.
Right? Yeah. Do you feel like it sounds a little more elevated than previous Lindsay?
I do actually. I feel it's a little bit more articulate, a little more buttoned up.
Yeah. Just like proceeding, you won't hear it quite as often in daily conversations, but you will hear it at work when we are up leveling our language just a little bit.
All right. And then we have the adverb previously.
Do we need to know anything here about this one?
Yeah. This is just sort of a bonus, right?
So we first have the word previous.
What's a little bit tricky about the grammar with these words is that previously we just add that L, Y, and we have an adverb.
We might say previously we agreed on a budget.
Yeah. And that means we're sharing when we agreed on a budget, but just sometime in the past.
But you can't do with this with these other words.
You cannot add L, Y and say, proceedingly or priorly.
Right. These words, you can't do that.
So it's a little tricky thing to remember.
All right. So that's the only one that gets to be that L, Y adverb.
Love it. All right. Okay, Aubrey, let's see how this goes into a real conversation.
Shall we do it? Yeah. You and I are in a meeting at work for this role play.
I'll start us out. Okay.
Let's move on to the next agenda item.
The preceding discussion took extra time.
So let's try to move through this next one quickly.
Lindsay, can you share our progress on the budget?
Can do. We took over from the prior team as requested and met this week.
We've nearly finalized the budget and we'll be submitting it ASAP.
That's great news. Did you have to cut anything major?
Yes. The previous budget allowed for annual bonuses and those had to be eliminated.
Uh-oh. That's not going to be good.
Oh, no. We're going to have some complaints about cutting the annual bonus.
People will not like that plan.
No. Oh, funny. So we used all three here.
I first said the preceding discussion took extra time.
So here I just mean the last discussion, the one right before this one, but because I'm in a meeting, I'm elevating my language, I say the preceding discussion.
All right. And then I said can do, meaning I can do it.
I'm saying yes, I will do it and I can do it.
I can share the progress.
And I say we took over from the prior team as requested and we met this week.
So the team before that used to be working on this, right?
And you could say we took over from the last team or the previous team, but those are just a little bit more informal.
So you are, you know, bumping up your language level to say the prior team instead at that higher level, moving into C1 guys, you want to have both options, all three options.
Absolutely. Yeah. And then finally you said the previous budget allowed for annual bonuses.
You could say the prior budget here, but then you're repeating vocabulary, which also is sort of flagged for people when I, if I hear someone say prior to sentences in a row that sounds strange, the repetition of vocabulary.
So I would definitely opt for previous here.
Just to switch it up. People will notice it when you start to repeat vocabulary.
So you want to have that variety for better connection.
So people listen to you.
I think people stop listening when they notice something like that.
You know, agree. It gets distracted.
Sounds repetitive. You're assuming the ideas are repeated because the vocabulary is repeated.
Totally. All right. Aubrey, where should we leave our listeners today?
This has been a high level episode.
I will say. Yes, I agree.
Right. Some vocabulary is quite formal for daily conversations.
I loved this question from a Kanye, but it's perfect for situations at work when you want to elevate your language.
So today's vocabulary can help you clearly refer to past events in an elevated way.
Yeah. And don't forget about our amazing bonus, bonus word for today, that acronym TMI, too much information.
Don't over explain, right?
Don't provide details that are not relevant to that meeting at that moment.
Maybe they're relevant to a different meeting, but not that one.
Right? Yes, right. Avoid wasting anyone's time.
That's also a huge takeaway.
We love people who recognize that we're all busy and make those efforts to not waste time with extra details.
Yeah. And also we're going to be talking about business meetings more this fall.
So guys, if you have a specific business meeting question, send it into supported dollars English.
We're fielding your questions on this topic because we're going to be creating some content around these topics.
All right. So good stuff.
Awesome. All right, Ubrey.
Have a good day. Talk to you soon.
You too. Thanks, Lindsay.
Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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