Need help from Fluther's grammarians. Can you help me to determine if I should use "subsequent" or "subsequently" in this sentence?

Subsequently

If you’re really aiming for clarity, I’d go with “Later-arriving”, but without any context it’s not clear to me, even yet.

For example, if this is a procedure on opening a retail store each morning, then I’d have “Directions for the first employee to unlock the doors” and follow that with “All other employees…”

If you’re really aiming for obfuscation and bureaucratese, then either of your proposed choices is sufficiently obtuse, and I’d give the nod – slight as it is – to “subsequently”.

Subsequent is an adjective, while subsequently is an adverb. Since the word describes how the employees are arriving, you should use “subsequently.”

Subsequently arriving employees should look for the signal.
OR
Subsequent employees should look for the signal.

@CWOTUS – Thank you! You never fail to make me chuckle. I’m not trying to obtuse or obfuscative. ;~) Yes, this is about opening a business in the morning. “Subsequent” is used in the text of the original security procedure and it didn’t sound right to me. After much over-analysis, it also didn’t sound wrong.

@livelaughlove21 and @PhiNotPi – Thank you, too! I appreciate a consensus, no matter how small.

I spy thorninmud typing up there. I’m interested to see the answer!

It becomes less ambiguous if you say “Employees arriving subsequently should look for the signal”

I don’t think it’s obtuse at all. If you want to be overly simplistic, I’d use “Employees arriving later should…,” as opposed to “later-arriving,” which I’d never expect to see in an employee manual. I like the suggestion given by @thorninmud best, but I don’t think the original statement really needs to be changed. It’s pretty clear to me what you were going for, and in the context of the rest of the manual, it’d be hard to miss the meaning of “subsequent.”

“Subsequently,” since that is an adverb and you are looking for a word to modify a verb, “arriving” (although it is a gerund in this case.)

Also, obfuscative is a made-up word. The adjective is obfuscatory.

I would say “Employees arriving subsequently…”

You could say “Subsequent employees…” (removing “arriving”), but it’s not very precise.

Part of the problem is that when I read your sentence beginning with “Subsequently”, I expect you to use a hyphen to express what you mean:

“Subsequently-arriving employees…”

Since you haven’t used the hyphen, I assume that you’ve left out a comma after the first word:

“Subsequently, arriving employees…”

And then the sentence doesn’t make any sense. So, the way that you’ve arranged the sentence is mildly irritating, and that makes it harder to read the sentence.

“Simplistic” does not mean “simple,” either.

Employers who arrive later is clear and concise. Out of context, I would also ask “later than when?”

Employers who arrive after 9:00 AM (the start of first period, the opening bell…) should wait for the guy with the cattle prod to show up.

I completely agree with @livelaughlove21. I’ve never understood why business documents (especially employee manuals) seem to be written to be confusing rather than enlightening. At any rate, I like “Employees arriving later should…”

Good answers above.

I would’ve just said “Employees arriving thereafter should look for the signal”

^^^ No, no, no. Thereafter is even more pretentious than subsequentially.

Interesting discussion. I agree that too often business documents can be confusing. I wonder if the authors are trying to sound like lawyers. (Or are lawyers)

@bookish1 I know it’s not a word. I made it up trying to be funny. I guess that was a flop.

@glacial – I didn’t leave out anything. I merely typed the sentence into the question box as it was written in the original manual. And I agree about the hyphen making sense.

@tedibear Oh, I believe you didn’t leave anything out. I’m just explaining my thought process on encountering the sentence as written.

I agree with @glacial above – “subsequently, hyphen, arriving” for clarity, since ‘subsequently’ is usually a sentence-modifying adverb when it opens a sentence & will likely be misread without the hyphen. Even then it sounds awkward to me & is best recast as @CWOTUS suggests: “later-arriving employees…”

If some form of subsequent must be used, how about “Employees subsequently arriving…” or “Subsequent arrival of employees…”, depending on context, to avoid having to form a compound hyphenated adjectival phrase?

I see no problem with using the sentence as is with subsequently. It never occurred to me that subsequently might be modifying the whole rest of the sentence. Subsequent is definitely incorrect, because it would be an adjective modifying employee. What is a subsequent employee?

No hyphen with -ly adverb plus adjective.

@Jeruba I stand corrected. But other adverbs might still require hyphens? Such as “well-established” or “late-breaking news?”

Yes: a compound adjective before a noun is normally hyphenated. That would be a temporary compound. The same phrase in the predicate is not.

This is a well-established practice.
The practice is well established.

“All workers should arrive at the same time” thus obviating the need for obfuscation.

This is a worthy question and I’m happy to have contributed my small comment, but does anyone else find it interesting that such intense discussion can be generated by grammar, which comprises man-made, not God-given or scientifically provable rules, many of them flexible and continually changing—and only the English ones at that! Not to imply for a second that proper (or at least that which is commonly held to be proper) grammar isn’t important for fostering clear communication, but imagine what could accomplished or solved if mankind maintained this level of sane, respectful discussion on world matters which most of us would rank far more pressing in importance.

“At a time when one was generally decrying the bombardment of Shanghai by the Japanese, I met Karl Kraus struggling over one of his famous comma problems. He said something like: I know that everything is futile when the house is burning. But I have to do this, as long as it is at all possible; for if those who are obliged to look after commas had always made sure they were in the right place, then Shanghai would not be burning.” Wikipedia

@flutherother Mwah for that!

@flutherother, point taken—although as a writer, I do understand and agree with that.

I love this thread.

I agree with the consensus that “subsequently” is correct, but unnecessarily fussy.

This question reminds me of that annoying phone message, “Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.” What they mean is that all calls are being answered in the order in which they are received. It makes no sense to talk about the order in which a single call is received.

@LostInParadise, I can stand that one more readily than the more common variant: “Your call will be answered in the order it was received.” The “in which” is necessary; it makes even less sense to talk about the order a call is received.

@tedibear : Gotcha. Sorry about that! I am so used to coming across nonexistent words in undergraduates’ papers… It’s because they don’t read.

@bookish1 – I love making up words! It’s one of the few things I was granted in my divorce from an English major. :D And I agree, too many people don’t read. :(

@tedibear: So you subscribe to the Humpty Dumpty theory of language, huh?

”‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’”