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I was memorizing a specific sentence in a passage about photography, and I accidentally made a mistake of memorizing 'downward' as 'downwards'. I'm a non-native English speaker so I'm not quite familiar with subtle distinctions like this. Is there any contextual or grammatical difference between these two?

Here's the sentence:

Using the camera at your own head height works well for photographing adults, but for children will be tilted downward.

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    They're equivalent and interchangeable. The only real difference is that historically, Brits used to favour downwards. But Americans always liked downward better, and we're falling into line now.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 15, 2018 at 13:52
  • God I've always wondered the difference between anyways and anyway.. Thanks again for the additional explanation!
    – user324391
    Commented Nov 15, 2018 at 14:01
  • I think Americans are more likely to adopt "folksy regionalisms" into mainstream colloquial contexts (usually, with a degree of "facetiousness"). So besides anyways, you'll often hear anyhoo (from anyhow, which I think was originally a Scottish dialectalism, but I haven't checked).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 15, 2018 at 14:06
  • As FumbleFingers says, they're interchangeable. For more, see the treatise on toward/towards here: english.stackexchange.com/questions/227755/…
    – L. Scott Johnson
    Commented Nov 15, 2018 at 16:35
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    ...having said that, Brits used to be more likely to use downwards in "adverbial" contexts such as (he) moved downwards. We never much liked the "adjectival" form a downwards path.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 15, 2018 at 16:56

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FumbleFingers commented:

They're equivalent and interchangeable. The only real difference is that historically,

Brits used to favour downwards

but

Americans always liked downward better

– and we're falling into line now.

... which is the same with, for example, backward/backwards, forward/forwards, upward/upwards.

But (rather curiously, imho) it's markedly "American" to use anyways instead of anyway as a colloquial "interjectory conjunction".

...

I think Americans are more likely to adopt "folksy regionalisms" into mainstream colloquial contexts (usually, with a degree of "facetiousness"). So besides anyways, you'll often hear anyhoo (from anyhow, which I think was originally a Scottish dialectalism, but I haven't checked).

I'd add that 'upwards mobility' is far rarer than 'upward mobility' even in the UK; this (dropping the s) is probably the case with other strong collocates/compounds (forward thinking; backward-looking ...). [EA]

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  • AmE dictionaries (and a few BrE ones I checked) seem not to include downwards as an adjective, the OED being an exception. (I don't know if the OP is interested in the adjective.) See, for example, Ngram / Ngram
    – DjinTonic
    Commented Oct 28 at 16:06

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