In an article from 1989 on academic writing, one subsection discussed the supposed incorrect use of “while” for “although.” Here’s an example:
Incorrect: “**While **correct statistical inference is vital to supporting your hypotheses, the narrative must not become cluttered with numbers having no context.”
I understand that “while” means “at the same time” and “although” sets up a statement of contrast. But I’ve seen “while” used in the first instance quite a bit.
Has the use of “while” interchangeably with “although” become accepted usage by grammarians, or is this always wrong?
Polycarp, is this a new convention or was the alternative use of “while” well known 20 years ago?
I ask because the dude who wrote this prescriptivist piece on getting published in academia was pretty adamant that using “while” adversatively was incorrect.
I’ll defer to one of the editors/published authors, but it’s my impression that it’s a quite accepted usage. To be totally honest, this sounds liek a pet peeve turned into a prescriptivist “rule.” Twix? Exapno? Anyone familiar with this?
According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, the non-temporal use of while dates back to Shakespeare’s time. It was early in the 20th century that people began complaining about it. Given its widespread use in naturally occurring English, I would say that, far from being always wrong, it is (almost) always right.
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Grammar has got to be one of the only arenas of knowledge where personal taste passes for “fact”. If I decide I don’t like yellow flowers and get enough people to agree with me, can I get them declared “wrong”, even though they occur in nature?
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I heard this from a pedant while back in college. Since he was grading my papers, I adjusted. He was (is?) and Oxford trained philologist whom I deeply respect. In academic papers, like all papers, you write for the audience.
However, I am torn between descriptivism and prescriptivism, and will suggest that “in the wild” “while” is a synonym for “although” and perfectly acceptable. The only reason my Professor was correct was that he was teaching me to write for perfectionist prescriptivist academics like himself.
Fair enough, The Second Stone. I think there needn’t be a conflict between descriptivism and prescriptivism. Descriptivism is concerned with the way language is. Prescriptivism is concerned with the way language ought to be relative to some purpose. As long as the latter is relativized in this way, all is well. If the purpose is to appease someone’s superstition about the immutable meaning of while, then by all means don’t use it in the sense of although.
I consider it to be sort of like “in spite of this being true…” which implies a disparate clause while also pointing out the coincidence in time… I don’t think it’s wrong.
But that’s not an issue with grammar specifically, that’s common to all language.
Language is basically arbitrary, and as long as two people at least roughly agree on a meaning, communication becomes possible.
So yeah, as far as language is concerned, get enough people to agree with you and you can change what is considered “right” (or rather: what is the most accepted syntax in a population).
I don’t get the second part; are you implying that that which is natural is necessarily “right”? Or merely that we cannot apply value judgements to nature at all?
Because neither of these is trivially true.
It seems to me that this is a stylistic recommendation rather than a grammatical rule. “While” in this sense is a well established usage, but it does have more potential for introducing ambiguity. Your first example sentence could be interpreted to mean that a narrative must* not become cluttered with numbers having no context only on those occasions when statistical inference is vital to supporting your hypotheses.
Of course, that is not a very likely interpretation here, but one could probably devise examples where the ambiguity is genuine (though I can’t be bothered to think of one now). I don’t think “although” has the same sort of potential for ambiguity.
**Sic*. Surely "should" would be better. This guy is wearing is prescriptivism on his sleeve.
I wasn’t trying to imply either. Of course we can apply (aesthetic) value judgments to nature, and in particular, to language. There are good reasons why people like Shakespeare are renowned for their talent. But to dismiss a prevalent naturally occurring linguistic phenomenon as “wrong” strikes me as trying to regulate nature for no good reason other than getting to feel superior for being in the know.
What’s especially annoying is when pedants try to justify their tastes through misguided appeals to logic (e.g., it is illogical to use while in the sense of although because it already has a temporal use or it is illogical to use double negatives because each instance of negation cancels out the other’s meaning). Such appeals consistently betray an ignorance of how languages work and how they change over time.
In spite of acceptance of how the word is used in much writing, the style guide from a large company I used to work for prohibited any use other than the temporal. This was for technical writing, and such usage could easily introduce ambiguity or incorrect meaning in some cases.
But anyone who thinks it’s just flat-out wrong is swimming upstream.
Yes, this highlights the systematicity of the “error”. There is in fact a tendency (certainly in Indo-European languages and perhaps in all languages) for temporal connectives to gradually acquire more abstract logical meanings over time. It’s nothing to be afraid of. But at the same time (heh), I can understand some people’s aversion to change.
This one seems more cut-and-dried to me. It’s very hard for me to think of a case where “since” would sound just as good as “because.”
“Since there was rain, we decided to stay home,”
“Because there was rain…”
“Because of the rain…”
It doesn’t seem to me that “since” is ever correct to use in an introductory clause. But “while” can be used legitimately in this way:
“While I was away, the UPS driver delivered a package.”
On the other hand, “while” seems to fit in most cases where “although” could also be used.
“Although most swans are white, black swans do, in fact, exist.”
“While most swans are white, black swans do, in fact, exist.”
To me, both are correct; most swans can be white while black swans exist too. Using “although” does make it clear that a comparison is being set up, but other than that, it seems they both convey the same meaning.
My personal pet theory is that people hear a “since this happened, that happened” sentence, impose the fallacy of cause and effect, and therefore confuse “since” with “because.”
is that people hear a “since this happened, that happened” sentence, impose the fallacy of cause and effect, and therefore confuse “since” with “because.”