Toward vs. Towards

Question

Is there any difference between TOWARD and TOWARDS?Thanks for any assistance,Jay

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Is there any difference between TOWARD and TOWARDS?[/nq]
Only a tiny bit. Figurative uses more often use "towards," while "toward" more often indicates a physical direction. If in doubt, you can just about always choose "towards" without confusing anybody.

¬R "The Home Shopping Network is the New Jersey of Drugs" http://users.bestweb.net/~notr/engel.html marika5000

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Is there any difference between TOWARD and TOWARDS?[/nq]
[nq:1]Only a tiny bit. Figurative uses more often use "towards," while "toward" more often indicates a physical direction. If in doubt, you can just about always choose "towards" without confusing anybody.[/nq]
Thanks!

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Reading from
[nq:2]Is there any difference between TOWARD and TOWARDS?[/nq]
[nq:1]Only a tiny bit. Figurative uses more often use "towards," while "toward" more often indicates a physical direction. If in doubt, you can just about always choose "towards" without confusing anybody.[/nq]
What has always bugged me is when people say "anyways" instead of "anyway".
Similarly, when someone says "I want to go to Wal-Mart's", instead of "I want to go to Wal-Mart", that bugs me, too.
Damaeus

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Only a tiny bit. Figurative uses more often use "towards," ... you can just about always choose "towards" without confusing anybody.[/nq]
[nq:1]What has always bugged me is when people say "anyways" instead of "anyway". Similarly, when someone says "I want to go to Wal-Mart's", instead of "I want to go to Wal-Mart", that bugs me, too. Damaeus[/nq]
In other words, you live in Oklahoma.
s

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Reading from
[nq:2]What has always bugged me is when people say "anyways" ... "I want to go to Wal-Mart", that bugs me, too.[/nq]
[nq:1]In other words, you live in Oklahoma.[/nq]
Texas.
Go ahead. Laugh. I don't see what's so funny, but go ahead and get it out of your system.
Damaeus

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Is there any difference between TOWARD and TOWARDS? Thanks for any assistance, Jay[/nq]
They're both used differently for their different uses.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Is there any difference between TOWARD and TOWARDS?[/nq]
No, not much. Maybe a little difference in some people's usage is all.
Oddly, I once made a post on this subject, which is available at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/besides.html

It's short, so I reproduce it below.
cut here
[nq:1]I don't know if these threads have been around lately; sorry if this is a repetition. But are toward and towards synonymous? Or does, say, toward* imply direction and *towards time? And beside and besides?[/nq]
Interesting question. Let's see: "toward(s)" How do I mean thee? Let me count the ways:
(a) He walked steadily toward(s) the man with the gun. (goal-directed continuous linear motion, object = goal) (b) Toward(s) midnight, things get a little rowdy downtown. (TIME is SPACE metaphor mapping of (a), object = terminal instant)
(c) Toward(s) the end of the book it gets technical. (READING is TRAVELING metaphor mapping of (a))
(a)-(c) sound perfectly ordinary either way (though one additional unresolved question beside the "s" /z/) is the W. Is it pronounced or not? I use all of these myself:
/tord/ /tword/
/tordz/ /twordz/)
(d) She's acting rather oddly toward(s) me.
Aha! I do find the "s" here a little strange, perhaps because it brings
too strong a physical sense of the motion, which is purely abstract in this case. The sentence is about the two people involved, not the metaphorical transfer of behavioral information via the Conduit Metaphor; any focus on that is wasted effort - it'll be presupposed.

But that's the only difference I can think of offhand, and it's not very big, and it might easily be personal whim. I'd guess the variation
isn't semantic at all, but sociolinguistic. Oh, and I assume you have dictionaries available.
"Beside(s)" is another matter. The principal spatial sense is obvious (be (at) side (of)); but it's deictic, and those are always difficult to
define (check out any dictionary on "left" vs. "right", for instance). A lot depends on what the object is, and whether it can be said to have
a distinguished direction called a "side", or whether it simply means 'close to' without any radial or directional information. But the strictly physical basic meaning can't use "s":
(e) The Barcalounger will look great beside(*s) the sofa.

Besides that meaning, though, there's a very different one that means "in addition". You can sort of see the dead metaphor in that, but it's so far from its source that I'd call it a different word. One argument for that analysis is that you can use "s" with it:

(f) The Barcalounger will look great; beside(s), we've already paid.
If we look hard enough, we might find something along these lines for "toward(s)", too.
-John Lawler U of Michigan Linguistics Dept http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/disclaimers.html
#include disclaimers.h

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