as follows

[Maybo]

Are the following the same?

1. The list is as follows:
2. The list is as it follows:
3. The list follows:

 

[Rover_KE]

In what context?

 

[Maybo]

In what context?

For example, I would like to show a list of things that someone need to buy.

The list is as follows:
1. One pen
2. Three apples
3. Two notebooks

 

[emsr2d2]

I can't imagine there ever being a need to do so. If you're the person who needs to buy them, you would write "Shopping List" or "To Buy" at the top, underline it and then just write the products.

 

[Maybo]

I can't imagine there ever being a need to do so. If you're the person who needs to buy them, you would write "Shopping List" or "To Buy" at the top, underline it and then just write the products.

But I want to know if they are the same because "as follows" appears quite often in writing.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Are the following the same?

They're all different. I think what you want to know is whether they mean the same thing.

1. The list is as follows:

That's fine. (It's idiomatic. As follows is a fixed phrase.)

2. The list is as it follows:

That's wrong and doesn't mean anything. Don't use it.

3. The list follows:

That means the same thing as 1, but it isn't natural. Don't use it.

Now you know!

 

[jutfrank]

I wouldn't say that 3 means the same thing as 1.

The form that Maybo is looking for is as follows:

X is as follows:
Xs are as follows:

 

[emsr2d2]

Maybo picked an unfortunate example when he/she used a shopping list. Use it like this:

- I have finalised the list of participants. The final list is as follows:
- I have finalised the list of participants. The names of the participants are as follows:

- You asked me to help with your essay. My recommended changes are as follows:
- You asked me for my suggested changes to your essay. They are as follows:

They could end with "The final list follows", "The names of the participants follow", "My recommended changes follow" and "They follow". In all those cases, the colon would be replaced by a full stop.

 

[Tdol]

But forget #2 unless you can tell us what it refers to.

 

[TheParser]

NOT A TEACHER


Maybo, as the teachers reminded us language learners, always use "as follows," not "as it follows" for a list.

I found some information from an expert whom many Americans respect.

1. "As follows" is the correct form.
2. It is elliptical for "as it follows." (That is, the word "it" is left out.)
3. It never means "as they follow."

Source: Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (1998), page 56.

 

[Phaedrus]

I found some information from an expert whom many Americans respect.

1. "As follows" is the correct form.
2. It is elliptical for "as it follows." (That is, the word "it" is left out.)
3. It never means "as they follow."

Source: Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (1998), page 56.

I'd like to thank TheParser for this reference. I hadn't thought to look in Garner when I made my post above, now deleted. It appeared to me that none of my grammar books (including the major grammars by Sweet, Curme, Poutsma, Kruisinga, Jespersen, Quirk et al., and Huddleston & Pullum) had anything to say about the construction. That inspired me to improvise.

In my 2016 edition of Garner's usage guide, he cites evidence (in his entry on as follows) from a grammar much older than Sweet's, which in turn, I just discovered, cites evidence from an even older grammarian/rhetorician! I'm referring, respectively, to Lindley Murray's grammar (1824), and to George Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776). I look forward to getting a hold of those works.

It's fascinating, I think, that Lindley and Campbell deemed follows an "impersonal verb" in that construction, a verb which essentially lacks a subject, though it is possible to supply it as subject. I wonder if their view and Garner's might be considered distinct. Garner calls the construction "elliptical," which to me means that he finds the "it" to be elided.

I don't get the sense that Lindley and Campbell viewed the it that way, and I myself have no sense that anything is elided in the construction, though this doubtless owes partly to the fact that I have been using as follows as a set phrase for a number of decades and feel (as it were) the phrase as a unit in my mind. Nothing seems omitted in it, despite the grammatical riddle it poses to the few who think about it.

It has occurred to me that we sometimes find a formal adverb in the middle of the construction: as hereafter follows. It has also occurred to me that we can have inverted constructions like this: Hereafter follows the list. This has caused me to wonder whether the subject of follows is perhaps silent, i.e. whether the subject of follows is the very extra-sentential element that as follows introduces: The list is as [= in the manner that] follows ___.

This is but an alternate hypothesis that has occurred to me. As would itself license the inversion possible with hereafter. The construction would be as incomplete as a sentence like John said: when used to introduce that which John said in the following text, the difference being that it is the subject itself which would be missing and gestured at.

I view the phrase as performing a linguistic pointing gesture. Quirk et al. (1985) actually describe as follows as an indicator of apposition.

 

[Tdol]

It has occurred to me that we sometimes find a formal adverb in the middle of the construction: as hereafter follows

That is a painful usage.