{"id":1527,"date":"2016-09-25T16:20:19","date_gmt":"2016-09-25T16:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/?p=1527"},"modified":"2016-09-25T16:20:19","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T16:20:19","slug":"backward-and-backwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/backward-and-backwards\/","title":{"rendered":"Backward and backwards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The word <strong>backward<\/strong> can be used both as an adjective and as an adverb.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Take two steps <strong>backward<\/strong>. (Here the word backward is used as an adverb.)<\/li>\n<li>She gave the cottage a sad<strong> backward glance<\/strong>. (Here backward is used as an adjective because it goes before the noun glance.)<\/li>\n<li>We watched the backward flow of the tide.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Backwards<\/strong> can be a bit problematic. It can only be used as an adverb.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He glanced <strong>backward.<\/strong> \/ He glanced <strong>backwards.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Can you turn the clock <strong>backward \/ backwards?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>He took a <strong>backward<\/strong> glance. (NOT He took a backwards glance. Backwards is an adverb. It is not possible here because we need an adjective before a noun.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you are not sure about your grammar, always use <strong>\u2018backward\u2019<\/strong> and be safe. The same rule applies to words like <strong>forward, toward, westward, northward<\/strong> etc.\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">While forward and toward can be used both as an adjective and an adverb, forwards and towards can only be used as an adverb.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The word backward can be used both as an adjective and as an adverb. Take two steps backward. (Here the word backward is used as an adverb.) She gave the cottage a sad backward&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[327],"class_list":["post-1527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vocabulary","tag-backward-or-backwards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1528,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions\/1528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}