Monday, March 16, 2015

Toward or towards? Anyway, the correct word is...

Both. This one has bugged me for a long time, and when it came to writing a blog entry about it, I would forget it over and over and kick myself for not writing the topic down somewhere so I wouldn't forget it. I've checked a few different sources, and it seems that the consensus is that these words are interchangeable, only that towards is used more in Britain and toward is more common in the US. What does that mean for Canadians? Sadly, it means the same old confused method of expressing ourselves with a combination of US and British English. Since both are correct, my rule of thumb is that you should just pick your preferred version of the word, and stick with it. I just finished proofreading a document that combined the use of both, sometimes even within the same paragraph, and that looked really odd.

Anyway, I thought the answer would be more like anyway where the use of anyways is actually not correct; only anyway is the correct term, but apparently toward and towards are not analogous.