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According to: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/concerned

Concerned has the following meanings:

adjective

  1. interested or affected: concerned citizens.
  2. troubled or anxious: a concerned look.
  3. having a connection or involvement; participating: They arrested all those concerned in the kidnapping.

My sentence is the following:

It detects [something] and extends [something] of the concerned [things].

I am not 100% sure whether my use of the word "concerned" is correct here. I want to say that it only extends [something] to the [things] that did [something] that was detected. The closest definition would be the third one (involved).

Is it correct to use "concerned" here? Is there a better word?

Edit: The original sentence is:

A model detects the preemptions and extends the computation time of the [concerned] jobs.

I did not wanted to bring too much confusion with very specific words, but I understand that it might also be difficult to understand without...

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  • 1
    Could you give an example (here in the comments is fine) of your sentence with your variable words filled in? It'll be easier for some people to read it. Namely me.
    – Alexander
    May 9, 2014 at 18:40
  • @Alexander A model detects the preemptions and extends the computation time of the jobs. (those that were preempted)
    – Maxime
    May 9, 2014 at 18:52
  • I think “related jobs” would be better. May 9, 2014 at 18:56

2 Answers 2

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If you use concerned, it should be placed after the noun it modifies rather than before. Before the noun concerned usually means worried or interested, and it will cause readers a moment of disorientation before they figure out what you mean.

In any case, I would use involved rather than concerned. Concerned isn't exactly wrong—if you say the jobs concerned no one will misunderstand you—but it tends to be used in a more ‘active’ sense than involved: we tend to say that a single ‘higher’ entity is concerned with (or concerns itself with) multiple subordinate entities, while the subordinate entities are involved in the higher entity.

Employing the participle phrase of the jobs involved to modify both preemptions and times is entirely proper and grammatical, but it makes a complicated sentence a reader may have to read twice to understand. I would do it this way instead:

A model detects the preemptions of the jobs involved, and extends their computation times.


ADDED: It now appears that ‘the jobs involved’ are not all the currently running jobs but only those which have undergone preemption. That being the case, I now think the phrase ‘the jobs involved’ is ambiguously located, and possibly ambiguous in itself; I suggest this instead:

A model detects which jobs have undergone preemption, and extends their computation times.

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  • Thank you for your answer. The term model actually refers in my context to an active module (part of software) that is based on a model. A sort of metonymy in a sense...
    – Maxime
    May 9, 2014 at 20:16
  • @Maxime In that case I'm glad I bracketed that off at the bottom! I'll delete it. May 9, 2014 at 20:17
  • I'm still wondering if "A model detects the preemptions of the jobs involved, and extends their computation times." is the exact same as "A model detects the preemptions and extends the computation times of the jobs involved.". When I only read the first part "A model detects the preemptions of the jobs involved", I am confused: involved by what? By involved I meant "the jobs that have been preempted". Is it obvious in both sentences?
    – Maxime
    May 9, 2014 at 20:36
  • @Maxime Actually, it's not obvious in either sentence! I took your sentence to mean that the model polls the jobs involved to determines which have been preempted and consequently have had their computation times extended. Let me take another stab at this. May 9, 2014 at 20:41
  • @Maxime Does the model then allocate additional time to the preempted jobs? May 9, 2014 at 20:43
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Your use of "concerned" seems to be correct, but the structure of the sentence looks wrong: extends to rather than of, and things concerned is more idiomatic than concerned things (your word order suggests meaning 2, whereas you want meaning 1 or 3). It's hard to tell without the missing bits.

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  • Thank you, I have edited my question. Could you suggest another way to write it?
    – Maxime
    May 9, 2014 at 18:55

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