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I was recently corrected by an editor for using “toward” instead of “towards.” I still disagree with him, but hey … I never bite the hand that feeds me.
My assumption has always been that “toward” (and likewise “backward”) were more an American English convention, and adding the extra “s” was more a British convention. Dictionaries I use list both as synonyms. But I’ve seen a few posts lately in other forums that claim there is a difference depending on whether the words are used as adjectives, adverbs, or prepositions. Personally, I prefer to lose the “s” which I consider superfluous.
I searched this forum for “toward” + “towards” and found nothing, so maybe it’s a non-issue. But I thought I’d ask here, since WWW is always my reference of choice. Any input most appreciated.
Still no definitive answer to my original question, perhaps because it doesn’t exist … the answer, not my question.
I found an interesting thread about it here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Grammar_Mishaps__Toward_vs_Towards
and they also seem to be undecided on the issue, though many comments reinforce the idea that the extra “s” is more a British English convention.
For what it’s worth, a Google of “toward” yields 238 million hits, and “towards” nets 332 million.
Toward is listed both as a preposition and as an adjective, both with toward and towards as variants, if you look at enough dictionaries. The best I can tell is, ironically, the -s is a vestige of an Old English adjectival ending. Now towards as an adjective seems exceedingly rare as compared with toward. With the preposition, towards appears to edge out toward in usage.
I use toward in most contexts.
I defer to a person who has done more research on the English language than I: Bill Bryson, in his Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words says only that — as you noted, Heimhenge — toward is more common in the U.S., while towards is more common in the U.K., but either is correct.
Additionally, and I’m offering only my own thoughts here, I think consistency is appropriate throughout your writing. So if you use toward, perhaps you should also be sure to use backward (without the -s) and afterward (without the -s), for example.
As a final point, one of the only situations for which I think the distinction is meaningful is in the variants beside and besides. I know those words deal with affixes different from the above mentioned -ward, but it’s the only similar word I could come up with (upon very brief reflection) for which the -s ending implicates actual different usages.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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