As, Because, and Since Are Not the Same Words

I did not understand various components of English until I learned Spanish and French.*

Similarly, I didn’t think much about three words that English speakers use interchangeably until I worked with people for whom English was not their first language:

• As
• Because
• Since

Years editing non-native English speakers’ submissions to engineering and scientific journals and technology conferences taught me to appreciate significant differences among these words.

Most of us comfortably use them as synonyms for one another.

This creates uncomfortable confusion when using since, because, and as to describe causal relationships.

For that reason, and because sense is a homophone for since, I choose carefully which word to use in each instance it appears in my writing and speech.

I think everyone should.

While I appreciate the clever opportunities to craft lyrical and dazzling prose and elegant poetry by selecting among these words, I believe that maximizing clarity in non-fiction, fictional narrative, and business or other formal communication depends on the discipline to apply these concepts:

“Because” is explicitly causal. Use it to describe cause-and-effect relationships.

In research on influence and persuasion, it is literally a magic word. People will do things they would not otherwise do when they hear a reason justified by “because.”

“Since” and “as” both have temporal implications that “because” does not imply.

Among multiple distinct definitions, “as” also has relationship and comparative meanings.

Use “since” to describe time elapsed since something happened.

Do not use “since” to describe why what happened since then happened.

Use “as” to describe events occurring simultaneously or as part of a phrase that makes clear its use (as much as, as if). Consider using “while” instead.

_{* In American government schools at the time I was in them, the common pedagogical practice was to assign children to educational tracks based on their teachers’ perceptions of each child’s likelihood to graduate from high school and start or complete higher education. Frustratingly, at the time teachers tracked “smart” kids into “honors” courses that focused on reading classics and writing essays, they tracked the scrubs destined for the working classes into basic or even remedial courses that taught diagramming sentences … which their more scholarly peers typically did not learn unless they took language classes that required learning stuff like direct and indirect objects, prepositions and conjunctions, and the order of adjectives and adverbs.}

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