A Word, Please:

When it comes to English grammar and usage, a lot of people worry about matters of “right” and “wrong.” For example, they may be the victims of the people who say it’s wrong to use “since” to mean “because,” as in, “Since the Dodgers are so far behind, we are leaving the game early.”

This example is straight off a website called Epson Presenters Online that says unequivocally: “‘Since’ is related to time. ‘Because’ is related to cause.” For this reason, the website authors say, our Dodgers example is wrong. It should be, “Because the Dodgers are so far behind, we are leaving the game early.”

There’s just one problem: “Webster’s New World College Dictionary,” “The American Heritage Dictionary” and “Merriam-Webster Online” all say that “since” can mean “because.”

Often, good grammar and usage are not a matter of right vs. wrong.

They’re a matter of wise vs. unwise.

Look at this example: “Since you graduated from Harvard, can you tell me how the professors are?”

There’s nothing technically wrong with this use of “since.” But it still stinks. The reason: Though “since” can mean “because,” a reader of this sentence will probably have to do a double take to figure out that that’s what you mean.

Here the word “since” directly precedes a past event. “Since you graduated from Harvard.” “Since you were 12.” “Since Hawaii became a state.” All of these seem, at first, to employ the more common definition of “since”: “during the period from the specified time or event until the present.” So this use of “since,” while not wrong per se, is still pretty bad.

“Since” is one of a group of conjunctions that like to mess with meaning in this way. Even more notorious is “while.”

“While you were the best math student in school, you were terrible at English.” The use of “while” to mean “although” is a pet peeve of Grammar Girl podcaster Mignon Fogarty. But she acknowledges it’s not a matter of right or wrong.

“I will continue to reserve ‘while’ for times when I mean ‘at the same time,’” she writes in “Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing,” “but I will now refrain from striking out ‘while’ every time I come across it in a document.”

In other words, “while” can mean “although,” but the smart writer knows readers are likely to assume it means “during the time that.”