A false, coined, fake, bogus or pseudo-title, also called a Time-style adjective and an anarthrous nominal premodifier, is a kind of preposed appositive phrase before a noun predominantly found in journalistic writing. It formally resembles a title, in that it does not start with an article, but is a common noun phrase, not a title. An example is the phrase convicted bomber in "convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh", rather than "the convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh".

Some usage writers condemn false titles, and others defend it. Its use was originally American, but it has become widely accepted in some other countries. In British usage it was generally confined to tabloid newspapers but has been making some headway on British websites in recent years.^[when?]

In the description of a false title as an anarthrous nominal premodifier, "anarthrous" means "lacking an article", and "nominal" is used in the sense "of the nature of a noun". Other phrases for the usage include "pseudo title", "coined title" and "preposed appositive".

In "Professor Herbert Marcuse", "Professor" is a title, while in "famed New Left philosopher Herbert Marcuse", "famed New Left philosopher" has the same syntax, with the omitted at the beginning, but is not a title. The linguist Charles F. Meyer wrote that "pseudo-titles" differ from titles in providing a description rather than honoring the person (and that there are gray areas, such as "former Vice President Dan Quayle").

The practice occurs as early as the late 19th century, as in "The culmination of the episode at Sheepshead Bay last week between Trainer William Walden and Reporter Mayhew, of the Herald … seems to reflect little credit on Editor Bennett." Some authors state that the practice began in or was popularized by the American Time magazine. Like the example above, early examples in Time were capitalized: "Ruskin's famed friend, Painter Sir John Millais". However, now they are usually in lower case. The Chicago Manual of Style observes, "When a title is used in apposition before a personal name – that is, not alone and as part of the name but as an equivalent to it, usually preceded by the or by a modifier – it is considered not a title but rather a descriptive phrase and is therefore lowercased." Meyer has compared the International Corpus of English with an earlier study to document the spread of the construction from American newspapers to those of other countries in the last two decades of the 20th century. In particular, during that time it became even more common in New Zealand and the Philippines than in the United States. He predicts that it is unlikely to appear in conversation.

Meyer notes that "pseudo-titles" (as he calls them) rarely contain a modifying phrase after the initial noun phrase, that is, forms such as "MILF Vice Chairman for Political Affairs Al-Hajj Murad Ebrahim" for the head of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front are rare. Furthermore, they cannot begin with a genitive phrase, "Osias Baldivino, the bureau's litigation and prosecution division chief" cannot be changed to "bureau's litigation and prosecution division chief Osias Baldivino": "bureau's" would need to be removed. He also cites Randolph Quirk's principle of "end-weight", which says that weightier parts of sentences are better placed at the end of sentences or smaller structures. Thus pseudo-titles, which by definition go at the beginning, tend to be short. He notes that pseudo-titles in New Zealand and Philippine newspapers are much more likely to exceed five words than those in the United States and Britain.

False titles are widely used in Nigerian English, capitalized and with a comma separating them from the person's name. This usage is considered incorrect in other countries.

Style guides and studies of language have differed strongly on whether the construction is correct: