Understanding deadlines when using UP TO, BEFORE, BY & UNTIL

Christmas is just around the corner and there are deadlines to be met.

Your work and Santa´s presents have to be ready before the 25th of December, by the 24th of December to be exact. At midnight of the 25th, he should have finished his deliveries and you should be relaxing with your family having celebrated a pleasant day without stress.

That is if you managed to meet your deadlines.

In English, deadlines are often established using a variety of expressions which include BY, UNTIL, BEFORE and UP TO, among others. Brazilian Portuguese relies on the word até.

The words BEFORE and UP TO infer a deadline by stating the day or date.

The work must be ready BEFORE Friday infers that the deadline is Friday but that the work should be completed on Thursday ready for Friday.
I need the number of hours worked UP TO (and including) the last day of the month BEFORE Friday. Here we see that the deadline inferred in calculating the number of hours worked is related to the range of dates from the first day (not defined here) to the last day being the end of the month.  Friday establishes a deadline for delivery as in the previous sentence.

BY and UNTIL are used to stipulate a specific deadline.

The work must be completed BY Friday. (This form establishes a priority and date that cannot be passed.)

You have UNTIL Friday to complete the work. (This form also specifies a date that cannot be passed, but greatly alters the concept of priorities). It is assumed here that there is enough time before the deadline to be able to prioritize other tasks as long as the deadline is respected.

What is most important here is to recognize the difference in the structures used. They ARE NOT interchangeable.

Contrast the difference in meaning by using  BY or UNTIL  in the following example.
I will be in the office BY 15:00 (3pm). This infers that the person is outside the office and will return to the office some time before, but no later than 15:00 (3pm).
I will be in the office UNTIL 15:00 (3pm). This, on the other hand, infers that the person is in the office and will leave the office at 15:00 (3pm).

As mentioned earlier, Brazilian Portuguese relies on the word até. This word translates primarily to UNTIL while BY is understood to mean até as well. Because of there being only a single word in Portuguese to mean both BY and UNTIL, there is often a lot of confusion as to which of these two words they should use. Whereas in English we might clearly understand what is implied through the use of one or the other, Brazilians will not always, "get" this difference.

To make things worse, the word até is also very close to the English preposition AT. This results in a kind of double translation where AT is read as até then translated into BY which ends up being used in the following way - "I'll meet you BY 15:00 (3pm)" when in fact the phrase should be "I'll meet you AT 15:00 (3pm)" 

Once you understand these difficulties it is up to you to make sure you communicate exactly what you mean.
"The last day or The deadline for delivery is day XXXX or date XXXX" might be easier to understand than "The XXXX has to be delivered BY XXXX".

While this situation may not always seem to be critical, the right choice of words reduces the doubts and head scratching that comes about through the misuse of similar meaning terms. For the native English speaker this is also a chance to reflect on how you communicate with other non-native users of English.

The problem with "NEXT"

Not so long ago while arranging a series of classes with a very important executive we agreed on Thursday mornings as being best for both of us. The only thing that needed to be done was to establish when we would start.
Tuesday morning I received an Email from my client stating that he would like to begin "NEXT Thursday". So I registered this time in my agenda and forwarded the email to the school where they duly registered the same details.
Two days later I was in the middle of another class when I received a message from the Executive asking me if I had forgotten my appointment with him. I quickly contacted the school to see if they had received any kind of message changing the day and was informed that the day booked was indeed next week. It took a few moments for me to understand what might have happened until I realized the curse of the "NEXT" in the executive's Email.
English is very clear about its use of "NEXT" especially when dealing with time.
THIS week, THIS month, THIS year and THIS century are as explicit as NEXT week, NEXT month, NEXT year and NEXT century are.
Thursday is understood to be THIS Thursday while NEXT Thursday will always refer to the Thursday of next week. When we use ON Thursday by itself, then the tense that follows indicates whether it is a Thursday of the past or a Thursday of the future. In the Executive's message received on Tuesday,  NEXT Thursday could only refer to the following Thursday,  not this Thursday in two days time.
In much the same way we often ask what HAPPENED last Thursday to refer to the week before and what WILL happen on Thursday, referring to the Thursday still to come this week. 

Brazilians have a big problem with NEXT (proximo) in their own language. Not everybody is sure whether PROXIMO is being used to mean THE NEXT event or the FOLLOWING event, which leads to many double questions and sometimes explanations of what is really meant. It would seem that this confusion is carried through to English where NEXT is used in place of THE NEXT, a legitimate structure but inconsistent with this concept of time.
After I understood what had happened to my Executive, I quickly replied to him with a brief explanation of what the problem was. This may not have been much of a problem with regards to classes, but I couldn’t help imagining the serious consequences of something similar happening to an international visitor.
It is, therefore very important to not only understand the correct way of referring to a future appointment,  but also understand that the simplest concepts in English may not be so simple in other cultures. ALWAYS include a DATE as well as the day,  the one or more TIME references, usually in 24-hour notation, as well as the time zones when necessary.

English is Challenging

The task of using a language that is so different to your own is a daunting task for so many. There are all types of influences that arise from differences in age, background, levels of education, affluence, general interests and of course what it is your peers, family and colleagues are involved in.

There is a sense when not being able to communicate adequately, that the person is stupid, an idiot or is not very professional. On the contrary. The fact that a person even makes the effort of trying to meet such a challenge must be seen as a positive attribute, one that must be supported and enhanced whenever possible.

While it may be taken for granted that a person should be able to speak more than one language, it must be seen too, that this ability comes at a cost, a cost of time dedicated to this ability that could have been better served being dedicated to the real necessities of a profession.

What must be recognized  is the fact that non-native English speakers come from different cultures. There is as great a difference in the way different cultures view their world as there is in the way a pessimist and an optimist view a glass half filled with water. These differences are sometimes slight and almost imperceptible and at other times so great that disasters can often occur.

.The focus here is two-fold. The first is to illustrate some of those disastrous differences, and their possible consequences and the other is to provide a series of hints to help both speaker and listener to understand what some of the more common mistakes are, why these mistakes occur, and ways of not making these mistakes, towards the goal of making communication clearer and more effective.