Questions for a Language Ninja: Making Sense of Since and Because

Q: When should you use “since,” and when should you use “because?” Also, can I use “because” at the beginning of a sentence?

Print A: Well, you should use “since” when you’re referring to a particular point in time. It would make precious little sense to say: “I’ve been tying my own shoes because I was four.”

Here is the difference between “since” and “because”: Since can be used as both an adverb and a conjunction, while because is merely a conjunction.

Now, in order to avoid confusion, the Ninja suggests using “because” when clarity might be an issue. For example: “Jessie’s been walking funny since he fell asleep under the thresher.” This could have two meanings. It could merely be a benign reference to the point when Jessie’s limp was first noticed, or it could mean that the threshing machine took off half of Jessie’s foot. Very different circumstances, but either way, Jessie should really be watched.

You might have heard the old elementary school axiom: “Never start a sentence with the word ‘because.'” You might have also been smacked with a ruler after hearing it, if you are of a certain age. Although profoundly incorrect, this motto evolved because [tee-hee!] conjunctions connect clauses. Therefore, starting a sentence with a subordinating conjunction might mean that the sentence following the conjunction is a mere fragment. However, the smallest amount of writing finesse can fix this problem. In this case, it’s called including a main clause.

“Because Jessie fell asleep under the thresher once.” Wrong!

“Because Jessie fell asleep under the thresher once, we now keep him chained to his bedpost.” Right! (Well… horribly wrong, but correct sentence structure.)

 Q: Why has the world rebelled against placing two spaces after a period? What’s so hideous about it?

A: Irritating, isn’t it? The Ninja feels your pain.

Okay, clearly the Ninja is an old fuddy-duddy who learned to type on a 90-lb Remington typewriter while babysitting young Methuselah, consarnit. Nevertheless, she’ll concede that the newfangled single-space rule that typographers have succeeded in shoving down our throats does have legitimate reasoning behind it. That reasoning is:

Blah, blah, blah, manual typewriters, blah, blah, monospaced fonts, blah, blah, computer coding, blah, proportional fonts, blah, blah, typesetters regularly commit suicide from the stress of blahing double space to single.

Or at least, that’s how the Ninja understands it.

Hey, if coping with the double space is obscenely difficult for the poor, underappreciated typesetters of the world, then the Ninja is happy to accommodate them by jettisoning the incredibly offensive space. However, she’d appreciate it if the proponents of the single-space rule didn’t attempt to justify this new directive with reasons unrelated to pure HTML coding. Here are a few examples the Ninja finds exceptionally galling:

Single space makes text easier to read. Can this really be possible? The Ninja accepts that reading styles vary tremendously, but how is one thwarted by an extra-clear demarcation between sentences? The Ninja would honestly prefer the width of the gap between sentences to be visible from Google Earth.

Double spaces after a period are aesthetically unpleasing. Why? Granted, if the reader expects the lettering of a particular document to be calligraphic art of the highest order, then fine. But in a blog? Seriously, people who find mild ugliness horribly distracting must have seizures every time they visit 99% of all websites.

It takes longer to type double spaces. Of course. And the reason you routinely run red lights is because it takes so darned long to move your foot from the gas to the brake.

Well, the Ninja has groused on long enough. The double space is dead – long live our single space overlords. The Ninja can only hope that italics aren’t permanently replaced with asterisks. That’s where we’re headed, you know – just ask the pitiful old underline.


Holly Troupe is a professional web content writer and an amateur everything else. She spends her days writing, eating, and looking for ways to incorporate the term “perfidy” into the urban vernacular.