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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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