Past few years v. Last few years
Dana Friedman
Which of the two do you all think is correct?
After all: If one says "For the last few years of my career, I've
been working on...."
It sounds like/reads like these few are the FINAL/last years of his/her
career.
If that same sentence were to read: "For the past few years...."
it could have only one real meaning...that being this year, and the few
years before it, not necessarily intimating that this year is to be the
final year of my career.
Any thoughts?
SCOTT I CHASE
Both "past few years" and "last few years" sound wrong when followed
by a modifying phrase. After all, the past few years have been the
past few years regardless of what you were doing with them. So why
qualify them? And the last few years were the last few years,
unless you specifically mean to suggest that they were some interval
of years near the end of some period long ago, as in "last few
years of my career," which definitely suggests that the speaker
is retired.
So my advice: drop "of my career." You don't need it, unless you're
retired. Then I would say "last few years" rather than "past few years."
It's more precise: what do you mean by the vague expression "past
few years" if not the "*last* few years." "Past" is best reserved
for indeterminate times, as in "In the past I would post to USENET
every day. But in the last few years the children have been keeping
me too busy."
-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase "The question seems to be of such a character
SIC...@CSA2.LBL.GOV that if I should come to life after my death
and some mathematician were to tell me that it
had been definitely settled, I think I would
immediately drop dead again." - Vandiver
eger...@vax.ox.ac.uk
Your reasoning makes sense to me, but here is another possible way
of looking at it: if you say "for the past few years..." it sounds
(to me) as though you are talking about a period which is now finished.
I don't mean it implies that your career is over, but that your work
on X (whatever you have been doing) is now complete, and for the next
few years of your career you will be working on Y instead. If you
have been working on X and are continuing to work on X, perhaps "for
the last few years..." would be more accurate.
This distinction might be purely in my imagination, though.
Both phrases sound correct to me; in fact I have been trying to
decide which one I would be most likely to say, and I am not sure.
Kari