The position of "below" in a sentence.

[Sin Jeong-hun]

Hello, good evening.

Before I started working at the company, I had never seen "below"
modifying nouns. The "Below" I know was used like these:
1) There is a pit below the surface.
2) Please read the passage below.

But in my company, a lot of people are using "below" like this:
Please read the below mail. (In a mail, referring a previous mail
below that line.)

I had told my manager, who often uses "below" that way, about this. I
thought it was wrong because "below mail" would mean "under that
mail". But he said he had seen a lot of cases where "below" was used
in that manner.

I looked up a Korean-English dictionary, and there WAS an adjective
usage, but the explanation was very short and there was no example
sentences.

So, how about it? "Please read the below mail" and "Please read the
mail below" are both acceptable?

[contrex]

On 27 Sep, 12:35, Sin Jeong-hun <typing...@gmail.com> wrote:

> So, how about it? "Please read the below mail" and "Please read the
> mail below" are both acceptable?

He may have seen lots of cases, but they may have been mistakes.
Strictly, there are words implied which I show in brackets here:
please read the mail below (these words). Please read the notes above
(these words). Please go through the door to the left (of this
notice). However, office English does not have to conform to strict
rules, so maybe you should stop annoying your manager.

[Robert Lieblich]

I ran a dictionary check, but no success. So here's my mostly
unsupported opinion:

Of the two "the mail below" is far more common, and I think most
English speakers, asked your question, would prefer it to "the below
mail" However, it's hard to say that "the below mail" is "wrong" or
"unacceptable," because many native English speakers use the form in
writing *if not speech. I know this because I have seen that form
many times in writing. It's possible, because (true confessions time)
I'm a lawyer, that it's mainly lawyer jargon and I've seen it in legal
contexts. But regardless of context, "the mail below" is preferable.

At any rate, saying or writing something that's barely "acceptable,"
when there are preferable ways of saying or writing the same thing,
seems like a foolish way to communicate. Particularly if your
colleagues use English to communicate with native English speakers,
"the mail below" will probably create a more favorable impression of
their skill in using the language.

--
Bob Lieblich
See the above post

[aquachimp]

Or; the earlier email?

[pimpom]

I'm also a non-native user and I asked essentially the same
question as the OP's quite some time ago in this NG. The "....the
below ....." form seems clumsy to me and I see it used much more
often by non-native users than by native speakers. On the other
hand, "the above......" in a similar context looks quite alright
to me.

[D. Stussy]

"Sin Jeong-hun" <typi...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:b8a974f9-7194-40e4...@u16g2000pru.googlegroups.com...

It's not modifying, and is therefore not an adjective. It's a preposition.
However, in this usage, the object is not stated and is understood to be
the thing within which "below" appears.

"Please read the passage below [this line.]"

"Please read the mail below [this section.]"

However:

"Please read the below mail" is wrong.

"Please read the underlying mail" would be a correct equivalency.

All of this is why one is not supposed to end a sentence with a
preposition. It leaves an unstated, hanging object.