Grammar Girl here.

I'm Minion Foggerty and this week I have a quick and dirty tip about the difference between

a while, one word, and a while, two words.

In a meeting middle with tips for writing great dialogue.

And now let's talk about a while which likes to confound us by having a one word version

and a two word version.

A while that's two words describes a time.

We have the article word A before the noun while and that article is a sure sign that

you're dealing with a noun.

Notice in the following sentence that you could replace a while with another article

noun combination such as a year.

It's been a while since squiggly tried marmite.

Before you could say, it's been a year since squiggly tried marmite.

Both of those sentences describe a length of time.

A while is more general and a year is more specific, but they're both a length of time.

Actually, when you use a year like that, it's also usually at least somewhat general

because it probably hasn't been exactly a year since squiggly tried marmite.

But I digress, let's get back to a while because we still need to talk about the one

word version.

A while as one word means for a time and it's an adverb.

Notice in the following sentence that you could replace a while with another adverb such

as quietly.

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