Comments on: Toward or Towards?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 01:48:19 +0000

In one thousand years, we wouldn’t be debating about the English language anymore. Mandarin will take over as the world’s most spoken language (no pun intended).

By: delski

delski — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:11:20 +0000

I love the humor Thanks for the explanation.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 02:35:42 +0000

Weighing in as a Brit: Tim, you’re partly right and partly not.

Spelling in American English has been simplified to a small degree: color, not colour; honor, not honour. But basic spelling reform was never fully implemented, so you still have many of the glorious [we share an unnecessary 'u' right there] inconsistencies and oddities we also revel in.

Whilst there is a tendency to shorten many words in American English [;-)], there is also a proclivity to lengthen others, or create (sometimes clumsy) new words which sound more professional and technical than simple English phrases. Did you know that many American clergy no longer ‘conduct someone’s funeral,’ instead they ‘funeralize’ them? I submit that’s shorter but somewhat less elegant.

Brits like to claim to be the final arbiters of English. We’re not. You’d like to make the same claim for Americans. You’re not. No one ‘owns’ a language. We simply speak it, write it, listen to it, mold [or mould] it, until it does what we need it to do.

One thousand years from now, my guess is the two languages may be quite different. And whose will be best? Why, mine, of course …!

By: Erika

Erika — Wed, 05 May 2010 07:58:58 +0000

As a further note, New Englanders tend to use “towards” as well… just a reflection of our roots, I guess!

By: pmoose

pmoose — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 01:16:20 +0000

I agree with “toward,” and have always used it. Still, I teach at a major American university, and find that most of my students have never used “toward.” When I suggest they refrain from using “towards” they act like they’ve never heard of it without the s.

By: dianne

dianne — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 23:30:09 +0000

Despite the fact that most of us use about 1/5th of it.

By: Steve Osborne

Steve Osborne — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:23:24 +0000

Also, we have the biggest vocabulary. So there.

By: Liz

Liz — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:46:36 +0000

Tim, you hit the nail spot-on!

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:42:06 +0000

I don’t know…I’m American, but I say and write ‘towards’ pretty frequently. Perhaps it gets used like ‘a’ and ‘an,’ depending on whether the next word begins with a vowel or consonant. Otherwise, I can’t detect a pattern to my potentially erratic use of the two words.

‘Whilst’ on the other hand, is distinctively British and unnecessarly clumsy in the mouth. I doubt any Americans use it over the more asthetically pleasing ‘while.’

In general, I’ve noticed American spelling rules gravitate towards saving space and being logical - no unnecessary ‘u’s in ‘color,’ ‘tumor,’ etc. Dialog is 25% shorter than it’s insular cousin, and customize is phonetically unambiguous compared to its confused counterpart. Since I, my compatriots, and our ancestors descend from an unbroken linguistic line of English speakers on back to the Norman invasion, nobody can claim that British English is a purer or better form. Besides, dialectically we’re much more homogenous than Britain, where people at one end of the island can barely understand those at the other end, we outnumber them by more than 5 to 1 (considering N. American English vs. all dialects from Britain and Ireland), and we dominate the world politically and culturally, so I’d humbly submit that we’re the final authority on anything English-related.

The truth hurts, I know