Learn English – Can you end a sentence with ‘hence’

adverbsgrammaticalitysentence-ends

Pretentiousness/archaism aside, does the sentence

Any changes that were made have been detailed hence.

make sense? The context would be that the descriptions of changes would be found in the paragraphs following this sentence.

Best Answer

A look at the three meanings of hence, reveal possible meanings of:

  1. "As a consequence; for this reason". Not the meaning here, and makes no grammatical sense.
  2. "From now" I expect that is the intended meaning, (i.e. "we will detail the changes after this") but the dictionary says it must be "used after a period of time" - i.e. that the period of time must come before 'hence' in the sentence, which is not the case.
  3. "From here" (archaic). Again not what is meant.

Therefore I conclude that the word is misused here. You could say "the changes that were made will be detailed a week hence". The writing of "have been detailed" means the detailing occurred in the past, even if it is later in the document (which I assume is what the writer is trying to imply), so that's two reasons 'hence' shouldn't be used.

There are plenty of ways to correctly end a sentence with 'hence'., including the example I gave above and Joe Dark's example.

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