A grammar question

[lordcloudx]

"At this point in time." apart from being considered bad usage, wasted words etc. Is this phrase grammatically incorrect?

Some know-it-all from my class pointed out something about prepositions blibble bla bla etc. and said that it should be "at this point of time." (which is still a silly way of saying "now")

Well, I didn't buy that at all. So I did a google search and all I found was that it was popularized by some lawyer during the 1970s.

What do you guys think?

[Sailor Kitty]

I see absolutly nothing wrong with it.

[lordcloudx]

That's what I was thinking. Aside from being cliché, I don't see anything wrong with that phrase.

When someone says "wrong grammar," I automatically assume it has something to do with subject-verb agreement, punctuation, (which I'm not very particular with) misplaced or dangling modifiers and stuff like that.

Besides, don't the japs say "toki no naka ni" (inside time... a rough translation) all the time?

[Jake]

"At this point in time." apart from being considered bad usage, wasted words etc. Is this phrase grammatically incorrect?

Some know-it-all from my class pointed out something about prepositions blibble bla bla etc. and said that it should be "at this point of time." (which is still a silly way of saying "now")

It seems to me that the choice between 'in' and 'of' should come down to whether you consider time to be a collection of discrete instants or a continuum. To claim 'in' is incorrect kind of suggests that you don't believe that time is continuous... or perhaps that the chronological continuum is a property of some extrachronological entity called 'time', but not actually a part of it. Both of which seem pretty weird beliefs, to me. (Hardcore physics may well decide time is a set of discrete planck-time periods, but that's not how we observe it.)

(The other option is that 'point' could be considered to have some known duration of its own, one might say "three seconds of time" in the same way one might say "three metres of cloth"... but 'point' usually refers to a position, not a span.)

Time is a little odd, in that regard, as it's referred to similar to a space ("in the afternoon we went shopping") or a position ("on Tuesday afternoon we went shopping") or a location ("at three P.M. we went shopping") depending on how exactly you're referring to it. But I'm fairly sure that I've never seen 'a point of time' used, and were I proofreading text which included that I'd flag it.

(I wouldn't even necessarily call it bad usage, for that matter - it could be used to frame some point in the past with a context, for example, e.g. "At this point in time my grandmother was still living with us, and despite her diminutive stature she dominated the sitting room from her armchair in the corner". It's a little overwrought, but not bad per se.)

[lordcloudx]

Wow! That's a more detailed analysis than I could have asked for Jake. In fact, I think I'll print out this thread and bring your points up for discussion the next time I'm asked to recite for that class.

I guess I could go off-tangent and bring up quantum physics and the concept of spacetime too hehe.
(That guy pissed me off by correcting me mid-sentence, which I think was totally rude.)

btw, I did a google search for "at this point of time" and there were actually all kinds of websites using this phrase. Maybe they did it to avoid using the "in." It just sounds plain awkward to my ears though.

[Jake]

Wow! That's a more detailed analysis than I could have asked for Jake. In fact, I think I'll print out this thread and bring your points up for discussion the next time I'm asked to recite for that class.

Well, I don't know of any specific grammar rule that states the case either way, that's just my opinion and understanding, based on 27 years of speaking and reading English - I'm pretty sure it just depends what kind of concept 'time' is. I can understand a good reason why 'in' might be the correct preposition, but I can't think of a particularly good one for 'of'. I'd certainly be interested in what the reasoning there is...

btw, I did a google search for "at this point of time" and there were actually all kinds of websites using this phrase. Maybe they did it to avoid using the "in." It just sounds plain awkward to my ears though.

Likewise... it could be an American English thing, though, for all I know; they do several horrible things to the language that make me cringe, including messing with prepositions ("I'm going to write my mother" instead of "I'm going to write to my mother"). And if I ever get hold of a time machine whoever popularised the term 'burglarized' is on my list.

[papillon]

I've certainly never heard "this point of time" in American usage.

And weirdly, I can find plenty of web hits for people using both in the same document. In time is far, far more common. The other may be people having momentary brainmelts? I know I can stumble and use a strange word here and there if I'm not paying attention...

[Mihel]

May I suggest that there is a perfectly valid grammatical reason for the use of "in" as the preposition in this phrase:

"At this point of time" is wrong by the definition of point as understood in this context. When referring to time, the use of point is that of a specific location, similar to the geometric understanding of the term This concept of "point" cannot have a composition by its nature as nothing more than a reference to a location. So, saying "point of time" is actually using the wrong definition.

This may be a common misuse by parallel with such phrases as "point of fact", but that phrase uses a different definition of point, that of a factual statement in oratory or argument.

It might also be parallel to "at the point of no return" and "at the point of walking away", but these phrases, while using the same sense of point as location, also clarify the very specific location that they are: "point of no return" is the place at which all hope of turning back is lost; "point of walking away" is the place on one's meter of tolerance where you turn away from whatever's going on and leave it.

Thus, "At this point of time" is disjointed in meaning: it attempts to couple the very specific location "at this point" with the genitive concept "of time." It would be like saying "At this point of map": a "point of map"? Is that the corner? Maybe they rolled it up so that it's pointy? No, it makes no real sense.

The psychological hoo-haw as I understand it is: "At this point" defines "point" as a location, and sets up the brain to receive a locative statement, such as "in time" or "on the map". When it receives something like "of time", which has nothing at all to do with location, it makes the brain wonder if it tries to think about it.

Which leads me to believe that the person who corrected you is a prescriptivist of the worst kind, the kind that likes to ignore the actual meanings of the words in favor of arcane and useless rules. But who knows

[kara24601]

While I can't think of a time where I used such a phrase ,
I myself see nothing wrong with using it -(even though it may or may not be wrong grammar-wise) - although I am a stickler for proper spelling and good sentences most of the time.