Today we’re introducing a new feature, Word Knots, where we’ll look at common situations involving words that are often confused or misused. We’re calling them knots in the context of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Thesaurus definition: “something that requires thought and skill for resolution.” Using knots is also appropriate because committing these blunders can tie a sentence up in knots to the point where understanding the intended meaning can be impossible. Keep in mind that AI (which doesn’t comprehend or understand context) will be of no help and will likely let these errors slide.

We’ll primarily be using two highly recommended sources: The Dictionary of Disagreeable English by Robert Hartwell Fiske (Chicago: Writer’s Digest Books) and Usage and Abusage by Eric Partridge (New York: W.W. Norton).

Rather than take a stern ‘grammar police’ approach we’ll try to keep it light and in each installment point out examples of semantic confusion that should be considered “must to avoid.”

From Fiske:

Forwards

Misused for forward:

The paddle tip describes a figure-of-eight pattern and each stage of the cycle produces forwards movement.

Each click will accelerate the clock in a forwards direction.

■

In both of these cases, use forward. (It’s being used as an adjective.)

Let’s look at the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary definitions:

forward 

adjective

1a: near, being at, or belonging to the forepart

2a: situated in advance

forward

adverb

: to or toward what is ahead or in front

Synonym: forwards

■

The bottom line is that as an adjective, only forward is correct. As an adverb, either forward or forwards is correct. Here’s an example:

Every time he tries to move forward, it seems he’s moving backward.

Or, you can say this:

Every time he tries to move forwards, it seems he’s moving backwards.

As you may have guessed, the same rules apply to backward and backwards.

Like this post? Follow Virtus Publishing on LinkedIn!