| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints
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| § 39. awhile / a while |
| People often confuse the adverb awhile with the noun phrase a while. This is hardly surprising because they sound the same and the noun phrase can function like an adverb. In many cases both forms are acceptable. You can say It took a while to get down the hill, where a while functions like other noun phrases such as an hour or a long time. You can also say It took awhile to get down the hill, where awhile functions like the adverb phrase quite long or the comparative adverb longer. | 1 |
| You may want to be careful using a while after prepositions, where traditional grammar calls for a noun as object. Thus you should write I’ll stay for a while, but not I’ll stay for awhile. Without the preposition, either form is acceptable: I’ll stay a while or I’ll stay awhile. | 2 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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