Hi, I'd like to know if I'm using the word "prevailing" correctly. My half of a sentence is: "She changed the prevailing HR policies …" Am I allowed to use it even though it's preceded by the word "changed" and therefore are no longer prevailing? Logically, shouldn't it be "previously prevailing?" But, then, I never hear it used that way. What's the story here? Thanks. (If not used correctly, feel free to contribute any suggestions to a replacement word.)
"Prevailing" here is an adjective. You can use tons of verbs as present participles and attach them to nouns. You basically just stick -ING on them. The cat runs. (verb) There is a running cat. (present participle adjective) So "changed" is really your verb and "prevailing" is fine where it is.
I see zero problem. If you had a sequence of past events, I suppose it could be "the then-prevailing" but I think that's unnecessary here.
By that logic, it should be "I changed the shirt I had been wearing.". At the point where I changed the shirt (or where she changed the policies) it was the shirt that I was wearing - not the one that I had been wearing - (and they were the prevailing policies). Your sentence is absolutely fine. No. prevalent widespread in a particular area or at a particular time.
If this is a story (not a work assignment) why not whip it out? "She changed the HR policy..." Does the reader need such detail?
I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me, so I'm just going to go into some semantics. prevailing: Existing at a particular time; current. The sentence is in the past tense, so it's not current, and even in the past, the policies were already changed, so it's double not current. Having the most appeal or influence. If these policies had the most appeal or influence they wouldn't have been changed. prevalent: widespread in a particular area or at a particular time. The policies were widespread, particularly in the past before She changed them. Non-semantically the original sentence is fine. Was wearing and had been wearing both work. If I changed the shirt I was wearing, it means I'm no longer wearing the same shirt. If I changed the shirt I had been wearing, gives the connotation that my wearing that shirt was an ongoing condition up until that point. I changed the shirt I had been wearing since Tuesday. It does add some heft to the accomplishment. Beating the prevailing World Champion of Boxing in a fistfight yesterday is more of an achievement than doing the same to 1925's World champion of Boxing.
1/ Maybe it's just me, but taking your own definition... prevailing = existing now (current) = and existing right up to the time when she changed them. whereas... prevalent = widespread = there's a lot of it about. 2/ I was doing this describes something I did yesterday. I had been doing this describes something I did before yesterday. 3/ Given this definition of to prevail... prevail to be or prove superior in strength, the prevailing World Champion should really be the guy who won, rather than the one who had been the champion, but who did not (no longer?) prevail on this occasion.
Check confusion by swapping out simpler words that serve the same grammatical function, as Shadowfax suggested. 'I swept up the remaining pieces'. Clearly the pieces aren't still remaining, but they were when they were swept up, so the tense is grammatically coherent.
I think that if, in your Hemmingwayesque quest to purge all extraneous detail, you're at the point of cutting the word "prevailing", you're altogether too far gone.
