The use of said as an adjective meaning aforementioned comes from legal and business writing, and it’s essentially a briefer replacement of words like aforementioned and aforesaid. Although replacing a long word with a short one is usually a good thing, in this case the shorter word can sound funny to people who are not used to legal and business writing. Plus, said when used this way would often bear outright removal.
In these examples, said serves no purpose and could be removed:
The said location is set up on 2123 Rhode Island, a vacant lot. [Property Magazine]
Verizon will accept pre-orders for the iPhone 4 starting this Thursday and will begin selling the said smart phone on February 10. [Top Tech Reviews]
In other cases, said could be replaced with the:
For months we’ve heard rumour of a ‘PlayStation Phone’ being released, and speculated with regards to what the specs and capabilities of said phone would be. [Kotaku]
Celebrity bloggers … love to post the latest scandalous photos of stars then ridicule said celebrities for being fame whores. [Creative Loafing Tampa]
Of course, the writer in that last example can get away with using said because the tone is humorous.
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