Grammar girl here, this week I have a quick and dirty tip about the words anyway and anyways.

A meaty middle about how to write a great topic sentence and what makes a topic sentence

different from a thesis and some featured listeners.

And now onto a listener question.

Annabelle asks, is it correct or incorrect to say, anyways, to someone?

As in, anyways, call me later.

Anyways sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Well Annabelle, the correct word is anyway, which is probably why the sound of anyways bothers

you so much.

There is some interesting history, but first here are two examples of anyway being used correctly.

Anyway, call me later.

In that sentence, it's being used to mean something like getting back to what we were

talking about, or maybe regardless of what we just said.

Anyway, call me later.

And here's another example where anyway means something like regardless.

Squiggly hated cooking, but our dvarks signed him up for classes anyway.

You might be wondering why you still see anyways spoken and written if it's wrong.

Well, even though the word is now widely considered an error, it's not new.

The Oxford English Dictionary has citations going back as far as the 1200s.

And today they say it's considered part of some American dialects.

So it's not so much that it's wrong, like a simple misspelling of bureaucrat is wrong,

which unfortunately I do all the time.

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