Use the word below as an adverb

[Note: This post was updated on Oct. 17, 2020.]

Q: Lately I’ve noticed that people are placing the word “below” in front of a noun or at the head of a sentence. Examples: “Click on the below link” instead of “Click on the link below” and “Below are the fixes” instead of “The fixes are below.” Is this at all proper?

A: Most authorities will tell you that “below” is not properly used as an adjective. So your first example (“the below link”) is not a universally accepted use. But the second (“Below are …”) is fine. Let’s look at them one at a time.

Nearly all standard dictionaries say that “below” functions exclusively as either an adverb (“they bought the apartment below”) or a preposition (“they bought the apartment below ours”). What’s the difference? They classify the word as an adverb if it doesn’t have an object, and as a preposition if it does.

In the sentence “Click on the below link,” the word “below” is an adjective modifying the noun “link.” While “above” is commonly used this way, “below” and “beneath” are not.

The usual order is “Click on the link below,” an arrangement in which “below” is traditionally classified as an adverb.

[Note: As we write in a later post, academic linguists have broken with tradition here. They consider “below” a preposition, whether it has an object (as in “click on the link below the picture”) or not (“click on the link below”). It’s a transitive preposition if it has an object, and intransitive if not. Dictionaries have not yet adopted this view.]

However, we can’t say the adjectival use is wrong. At least one publisher of standard dictionaries accepts it without comment.

Merriam-Webster classifies “below” as an adjective when it premodifies a noun and means “written or discussed lower on the same page or on a following page.” The example given is “the below list.” The more extensive Merriam-Webster Unabridged has a nearly identical definition and example. 

The adjectival usage is also found in the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence. And it’s similarly defined.

The OED’s earliest example is from an 1822 issue of the Philosophical Magazine: “According to the below observations, the thermometer falls one degree for every ascent of 224 feet.” (Oxford adds, however, that this use of “below” is rare in comparison with the similar use of “above.”)

However, aside from M-W, the standard dictionaries we usually consult do not recognize the use of “below” as an adjective. 

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, for example, has no such adjectival usage. It says “below” is an adverb when used, among other things, to indicate “farther down” or “in a later part of a given text: figures quoted below.”

The OED would agree with that classification of “below” as an adverb in the sense of “lower on a written sheet or page; hence, later in a book or writing; at the foot of the page.” Two OED citations for this usage are “Read what’s below” (1784) and “The forms subjoined in the note below” (1863).

The OED says that in cases like these (and this would also apply to the American Heritage example, “figures quoted below”), the adverb has no expressed object. In other words, the sentence doesn’t explicitly say below what.

As we mentioned above, when an object is present, “below” is traditionally classified as a preposition: “figures quoted below the dotted line” … “below zero” … “below par” … “below average,” and so on.

When “below” is used as an adverb, the word it modifies (whether adjective or verb) isn’t always implied.

All 10 standard dictionaries, as well as the OED, would classify “below” as an adverb in examples like “offices on the floor below” … “in the valley below” … “a grade below”… “a temperature of 40 below,” and so on.

We realize that in examples like those, “below” does not look like an adverb. In understanding the dictionaries’ rationale, it sometimes helps to imagine an unstated word like “located” or “positioned” in there somewhere: “the offices on the floor [located] below.”

Now let’s turn to your second example, “Below are the fixes.”

Here again, “below” would traditionally be classified as an adverb. The sentence is parallel to “The fixes are below.” (While we think “are below” at the end of the sentence is more graceful than “Below are” up front, the two versions are grammatically equivalent.)

One last point: the word “below” wasn’t either an adverb or a preposition when it first showed up in English in the 14th century. It was a verb meaning to make low or to humble.

William Langland used the verb in 1377 in Piers Plowman, his Middle English allegorical poem, but the OED says this usage is now obsolete or rare.

In case you’re wondering, the adverb first showed up around 1400 and the preposition around 1565, according to OED citations.  

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Locative expressions as adverbial complements — not as adverbial modifiers

The problem is that your understanding of an adverb as a word that modifies a verb isn’t inclusive enough. Yes, manner adverbs can modify verbs. But many adverb types can modify things other than verbs, while some adverb types cannot even modify verbs at all.

And in some sentences, the adverbs aren’t even modifiers of anything: they’re complements. That’s exactly what’s happening here, but you need to see through to the clause that’s been deleted for it to make sense to see these as complements not modifiers.

So what then is an adverb after all? It’s a whole bunch of distinct though sometimes partly overlapping word classes all clumped together under one label.

Details

Part of the confusion here is that historically, the “adverb” lexical category has been used as an umbrella term covering a broad collection of word classes that differ from each other not merely in their semantic properties but also in their syntactic properties. Some of these word classes are so different from each other that tossing them into a single same-named bucket can hide critical differences. You seem to have done this, provoking your confusion.

At the phrase level, adverbial phrases and clauses are multi-word syntactic constituents that can be swapped out for a single adverb. But because not all words classified as “adverbs” are identical in their semantic and syntactic properties, adverbials are likewise diversified.

Probably the easiest way to resolve your particular case is by classifying this particular use of below as a place adverb acting in the role of adverbial complement to a clause whose principal parts were “whiz-deleted”. (Whiz-deletion is the removal from a clause of a wh- word and an inflection of be, leaving just the tail end behind.)
That way, because it is now a complement instead of a modifier, it has no need to find a verb to modify, nor anything else to modify either.

Adverbial complements are mainly found as complements to linking verbs, prototypically copular be but also verbs like seem, become, appear, remain, and all the sense verbs. I’ll use be in these examples of locative expressions all used as place-adverbial complements.

• The milkman will be here soon.
• The cat is upstairs.
• The crew were ashore.
• The dog has been in the garage all night long.
• The kelp was below.
• Finally we were home!

Notice that although place adverbials can be adverbial complements, manner adverbials cannot be:

• The song was *quietly. [UNGRAMMATICAL]
• The song was *in a quiet manner. [UNGRAMMATICAL]

The same applies when the adverbial complement is used as a required but non-object complement of a transitive verb like put. You can use place adverbials for these sorts of complements, but you still cannot use manner adverbials for them:

• Put the dog outside.
• Put the dog in the garage.
• Put the dog *quietly. [UNGRAMMATICAL]

This proves that locative expressions have syntactic properties that cannot be explained if your only word classes are the classical seven of noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. There are more classes of word than just those seven, and locatives are one such.

When it comes to using below as an adverb, the OED gives for one sense:

In a lower place, at a lesser elevation; in or on the lower part, lowermost surface, etc., of something.

And then, rather tellingly, they provide this recent citation for that sense, one that’s very like your own:

2012 The Independent 18 July 40/4 — We peered over the edge of the boats at vast forests of kelp and the ghost white wisps of moon jellyfish below.

If you read below as the adverbial complement to a whiz-deleted “peer at the kelp and jellyfish which were below” clause, or in your case “gazed at the water which was below”, then that these are adverbs used as complements to a now-“missing” be verb here makes perfect syntactic sense.

You’re describing the position of something, and “where” questions can be easily answered with place adverbials. But that doesn’t mean they are somehow “not adverbs” when used with linking verbs. They still are. They’re just complements, though, not modifiers.

Below meaning ‘lower than’

We use below most commonly as a preposition meaning ‘lower than’. It has a similar meaning to under. The opposite of below is above. We use it when there is no contact between people or things:

[a teacher talking to a class]

Open your exercise book on page 27. Just below the picture there are some questions. Look at the picture and answer the questions.

There was a big clock below the painting.

When the adverb below is used to modify a noun, it follows the noun:

The apartment below is owned by a French couple.

We lived up in the mountains and the nearest town below was half an hour’s drive.

We use the adverb below when referring to the lower level or deck of a boat or ship:

[talking about a boat]

It was a wonderful little boat. We spent most of our time fishing and watching the sea. We’d go below to sleep and to eat.

Below referring forward in writing

In formal writing, we use below to refer to something that we will mention or show later:

In the figure below, the results show that 54% of the rats tested were carrying the antibody …

There has been much discussion and debate about global warming (see below).

Below: typical error

• We don’t use below when one thing touches or covers or hides something else; we usually use under instead:

Under a white coat, she wore an amazing red dress.

Not: Below a white coat …