Punctuation and Grammar and Usage, Oh My! Part 2: As

Reader, beware! There’s a perfectly innocuous preposition out there waiting to trip you up with its quiet ambiguity. 

The culprit: as. This lovely little word, elegant in its simplicity, has caused me more headaches while editing than any other preposition. (Probably. I’m side-eying you hard, among and between.) 

The problem with as is that it’s acquired three equally valid meanings: like, because, and while. This happens in language all the time. Words take on new meanings, sometimes shedding their old meanings and sometimes hanging on to more than one. Sometimes they even end up meaning precisely the opposite of their original usage. But, as in the case with as, this scenario can cause confusion. Allow me to demonstrate.

Here’s a sentence using as to mean like:

I dressed for the party as you did. 

Here’s a sentence using as to mean because:

I dressed for the party as you did.

Here’s a sentence using as to mean while:

I dressed for the party as you did.

Okay, maybe I’m stretching a bit there, since the likelihood of each meaning varies slightly; if I encountered this sentence “in the wild” I would probably assume that this as meant while—but maybe like. The because meaning would be more likely if there were a comma after party. But most of my clues would have to come from context, and it would be far easier on the reader to replace as with one of its clearer synonyms. 

Usage prescriptivists will be quick to point out that replacing as with like willy-nilly is a crime against the language, because the two actually have separate uses, or at least they did until a cigarette commercial messed everything up. (More on that in a later post.) In general, I’m a prescriptivist myself, but in this case, I prefer clarity to textbook correctness. Editors and writers must choose their language with the reader in mind, because clarity—or, more specifically, communication—is the highest calling of language. 

So be careful with as. It's a slippery little stinker. 

Do you have any usage questions that have been bugging you? Ask me in the comments—I’ll comment back if it’s a simple fix or do a post if it requires more depth (or is too awesome not to post about).