Gramer Girl here. I'm in Yon Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today,

we'll talk about the difference between the words through and throughout. And then we'll

talk about why you should avoid honey fugglers. English can seem like a muddled, confused,

and downright chaotic language. One popular meme to express and demonstrate this involves

the sentence, English is a difficult language to learn. It can be understood through tough,

thorough thought though. Although, see what I did there? The sentence is an extreme example

of the way English has words and spellings that just don't seem to make much sense. It's

not exactly a sentence that rolls off the tongue and isn't likely to actually show up

in the real world. What does happen more often though is confusion, especially when writing,

between the words through and throughout. In fact, a listener named Jordan asked about

the difference a few months ago. At first glance, these two words seem like they might

almost be interchangeable. So it can be tricky to know which one to use in any given instance.

Like in so many cases in English, I mean the memes aren't entirely wrong after all.

Coming up with rules is dangerous territory because there are always exceptions. But if

you want a handy guideline to remember when to use the through, try dropping the H. You

end up with trough, right? Now, this might sound like I'm still just riffing on the

meme from before, but hear me out. A trough's primary characteristic is that it's long

and usually straight. We primarily use the word through when we're talking about either

a physical or metaphorical straight line. There's a sense of direction with through, just

like with a trough. If you're driving through a forest, you may not necessarily be going

in a straight line all the time, but in a big picture sense, you're going from point

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