Can backward and forward be used interchangeably with backwards and forwards, or is there some particular situation in which one pair is consistently used over the other?
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The first pair is American English; the second pair is British English. – Mar 30 '13 at 14:45
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6@BillFranke That is not true. – tchrist Mar 30 '13 at 15:15
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1Executive summary: AmE—Use backward and forward; backwards and forwards are uncommon, and if you use them in some parts of the country you might sound like a foreigner. BrE—Use backward and forward for adjectives; backwards and forwards for adverbs. On a ship: use for'ard. I've never seen for'ards, and Oxford Dictionaries Online doesn't have it either. – Peter Shor Mar 30 '13 at 16:54
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2@PeterShor I’m pretty sure that a *forward-thinking attitude* in a *backward*-gazing world never have the ‑s on the ends of either of them. It seems that the directional modifiers (read: adverbs) on participial adjectives are exempt from any sort of interchangeability rule or regionalism, at least as far as I have been able to uncover. – tchrist Mar 30 '13 at 16:57
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In British English (and possibly others), backward and forward are adjectives, and backwards/forwards are adverbs.
A person may be backward1 or forward; a car may be forward of a "Stop" line; one might move something forward (that is, to a position which is forward of its current position). However, when describing that movement itself, it's forwards.
Related question: Meaning of "backwards"
1 Using backward to describe some developmental abnormality is frowned upon and not recommended. In fact, describing someone as forward is rather dated, too.
St John of the Cross
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4In AmE, we use them interchangeably. (Although backwards and forwards are less common.) – Peter Shor Mar 30 '13 at 15:03
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2@PeterShor So you would say that a car is forwards of a Stop line? Or simply use forward as the adverbial form? – St John of the Cross Mar 30 '13 at 15:05
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2Given that English adverbs are usually impossible to distinguish from English adjectives in actual constructions (how many ELU questions and answers suggest that something is or isn't an adverb, and speculate on why or why not?), I suspect that the rule quoted may be more honored in the breach than the observance throughout the UK. Is there a study of UK usage? Beyond "guides", I mean -- actual linguistic surveys with data and statistics. – John Lawler Mar 30 '13 at 15:12
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In the United States, the forms are used as @PeterShor describes. Their usage here is similar to that of toward(s) and beside(s). – John Lawler Mar 30 '13 at 15:17
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“-ward(s): The two forms are so nearly synonymous…choice between them is mostly determined by some notion of euphony in the particular context; some persons, apparently, have a fixed preference for the one or the other form. Sometimes, however, the difference in the form of the suffix corresponds to a difference in the shade of meaning conveyed, though *it would not be possible to give any general rule that would be universally accepted*. … Hence -wards seems to have an air of precision…avoided in poetical use. There appears to be no appreciable difference…between…toward and towards;…” – tchrist Mar 30 '13 at 15:28
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@tchrist Your reference (what is it?) seems to state (I'm unsure because of the ellipsis) that -wards is avoided in poetical use. If that is what it says, I am startled to see it, because a contrary example, one of the most famous lines in all of modern poetry, instantly leapt to mind: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" (from The Second Coming, by Yeats) Only one instance, but an awfully powerful one. I can't swear to this, having not yet researched it, but I feel in my bones that other examples would be fairly easy to come by. – John M. Landsberg Mar 30 '13 at 15:56
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@JohnM.Landsberg Yeah, I’m not completely sure of how much it actually tends to be avoided in poetic use, nor by whom. I am sure, however, that there is no universally accepted rule here. – tchrist Mar 30 '13 at 16:02
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@StJohnoftheCross In AmE, we would not typically use either forward or forwards in that context. (I'm not saying we never do, merely that it's not common.) AmE would tend toward/towards (either works) "over the stop line," or "ahead of the stop line," or "past the stop line," depending on the context. If "forward/forwards" is indeed chosen, then yes, the form absent the "s" (and requiring an attendant "of") would be much preferred. – John M. Landsberg Mar 30 '13 at 16:07
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What I am a little surprised and disappointed about is that I specifically said "British English", and all the commenters have been American. And I suspect the downvoter is too. – St John of the Cross Mar 30 '13 at 16:15
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@JohnM.Landsberg Oh,that was the OED. One can—and should—look up the detailed definitions, notes, and citations for all of -ward(s), backward(s), forward(s), toward(s) there, but as ProfL points out, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so until you carefully examine actual corpus instances and aggregate data, probably along several different axes, you will not be able to say much about what really is or is not used in the wild—let alone by whom. At the end of day, I expect OED’s *“it would not be possible to give any general rule that would be universally accepted”* still applies. – tchrist Mar 30 '13 at 16:18
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1@StJohnoftheCross Gosh, SJC, we're not all trolls; I'm sorry you think the downvoter would likely be from this side of the pond. I take your point, however, that the Brits don't seem to be weighing in. My above comment to you, with specific reference to AmE, however, was not ignoring your original answer; it was responding to your question to PeterShor, and you were asking about American usage. As for your original answer here, I found it excellent, and upvoted it. – John M. Landsberg Mar 30 '13 at 19:35
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@StJohnoftheCross Do clocks go backwards and forwards or backward and forward? – Turkeyphant Aug 28 '20 at 16:36