What are alternative phrases for "with respect to"?

Question

I often overuse the idiom "with respect to" - it's my default phrase when I'm writing formally and want to restrict the domain of a statement. e.g.

X is changing with respect to Y ...

Changes with respect to Z ...

With respect to A, ...

What are some alternatives to using this idiom?

I think this is Not Constructive, since there are many ways you can vary your choice of words/phrase structures to avoid repeating yourself. And if there was a "correct" answer, you'd probably end up overusing that instead. But you could use "relative to", "as regards", "regarding", etc. in many contexts. — FumbleFingers, Nov 01 '12 at 14:18
Wasn't this exact question asked a couple of days ago? I'm sure it was, but I can't find it. — Andrew Leach, Nov 01 '12 at 14:25
Another word to use is "about". But more important is the particular sentence that you want to write and the context of that sentence. Nothing exists in isolation, so asking isolating questions about what word you can replace with another is ultimately pointless. That's a major principle of writing, just as it is of biology: an organism that's evolved is like most complex life forms, but one that's slapdash tossed together is a Frankenstein's monster. Same's true for paragraphs, letters, sentences, phrases, books, etc. — , Nov 01 '12 at 14:38
@AndrewLeach, re “exact question asked a couple of days ago”, I doubt it. Perhaps you are thinking of Alleged misuse of the word 'respective' or of Can a sentence start with "due to", — James Waldby - jwpat7, Nov 01 '12 at 15:12
@jwpat7 No, it was definitely "I often overuse the idiom With respect to" — Andrew Leach, Nov 01 '12 at 15:20
@AndrewLeach, For what it's worth, per google no other ELU questions contain the phrase “overuse the idiom” . — James Waldby - jwpat7, Nov 01 '12 at 15:23
@jwpat7 Yes, I tried that before commenting. But Google updates its SE indexes very frequently, so a deleted question would be removed almost as quickly as new questions are included. Ah well, no matter. This version is here; and it falls in the definition of Not Constructive. — Andrew Leach, Nov 01 '12 at 15:56
@AndrewLeach You might be thinking of An alternative to “at the end of the day”. — coleopterist, Nov 01 '12 at 16:04
Alternatives are available in the thesaurus. Marking as General Reference. — coleopterist, Nov 01 '12 at 16:07

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 01 '12 at 14:16

2

As regards; with reference to; concerning

answered Nov 01 '12 at 14:16

Noah

13,490

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 01 '12 at 15:17

Re (“About, regarding, with reference to; especially in letters and documents”) is useful, or in law documents, in re (“(chiefly law) In the matter of; with regard to”). But in some of your examples, just drop out the “with respect to” phrase and its object; for example, in “X is changing with respect to Y” either X is changing on its own and one can say “X is changing” or X is not changing, in which case one usually need not say it is changing.

What are alternative phrases for "with respect to"?

2 Answers2