Legal Writing

Reflections on ?Versus?

By Maeve

The following sentence from an editorial about a money-saving measure taken by our local county government caught my eye:

It’s about cost-effective verses cheap.

The misspelling of versus was the eye magnet, but then I started thinking about the use of the word itself.

I don’t hear the word versus or see it written out very often anymore. It may still have currency among sports writers, but I don’t read the sports page, so I can’t say.

As a legal term, versus has been in the language since the 15th century:

preposition denoting action of one party against another, from L. versus “turned toward or against”

When I was in school, versus was commonly abbreviated as vs and italicized:

McCulloch vs Maryland (1819)
Miranda vs Arizona (1966)

Now the usual practice is to abbreviate versus as v. and not italicize it:

Roe v. Wade (1973)
Gregg v. Georgia (1976)

When it was still being written vs, the abbreviation was read as “versus.” Nowadays the paractice is to pronounce the v as the letter name: “Gregg [VEE] Georgia (1976)”

By now, many younger English speakers may be unaware that the v. in the name of a court case stands for versus.

Reflections on “Versus”

Full post as published by Daily Writing Tips on January 19, 2009 (boomark / email).