Using Like as a Conjunction

There is a general consensus among scholars of English when it comes to using like as a conjunction. Although using like as a conjunction seems to be popular among the general population when they speak or write informally, grammar and usage authorities warn that using like as a conjunction should not appear in formal writing. Listed below are the opinions of various respected grammarians on this subject.

The New York Public Library Writer’s Guide to Style And Usage plainly states:

Like and as are not interchangeable as conjunctions.

The Little Brown Handbook further reports:

Although the preposition like is often used as a conjunction in informal speech and in advertising (Dirt-Away works like a soap should), writing generally requires the conjunction as, as if, as though, or that.

They also provide an example:

SPEECH: It seemed like it did succeed.

WRITING: It seemed as if [or as though or that] it did succeed.

The Longman Guide to English Usage indicates:

Use like, not as, before a noun, to mean ‘similarly to, in the same way as’, where no verb follows: to sing like a bird. When a verb does follow, as is to be preferred today for formal writing, although the construction with like as conjunction has long been current in English: We are overrun by them, like the Australians were by rabbits. (Winston Churchill).

The Columbia Guide to Standard American English suggests:

The big usage issue since the nineteenth century has been the use of like as a conjunction, but the evidence is clear that we have been both speaking and writing in the Standard English even as we have been filling our handbooks with prohibitions of the usage. The fact is that many will say He runs like he’s pulled a muscle, even though not all will write it and relatively few will try to get it printed in Formal use.

The American Heritage Dictionary provides a usage note for the word like, it says:

Writers since Chaucer’s time have used like as a conjunction, but 19^th century and 20^th century critics have been so vehement in their condemnations of this usage that a writer who uses the construction in format style risks being accused of illiteracy or worse. Prudence requires The dogs howled as (not like) we expected them to. Like is more acceptably used as a conjunction in informal style with verbs such as feel, look, seems, sound, and taste, as in It looks like we are in for a rough winter. But here too as if is to be preferred in formal writing. There can be no objection to the use of like as a conjunction when the following verb is not expressed, as in He took to politics like a duck to water.

Finally The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage has this to say about using like as a conjunction:

The use of like as a conjunction has been dismissed as ‘illiterate’, ‘vulgar’, ‘sloppy’, or, in the coded language of modern grammarians, ‘informal’. I have reconsidered the matter by examining the works of many recent writers of standing, British, American, and from further afield, and the results are, I think, of interest. It would appear that in many kinds if written and spoken English like as a conjunction is struggling towards acceptable standard or neutral ground. It is not there yet. But the distributional patterns suggest that the long-standing resistance to this omnipresent little work is beginning to crumble.

The research from the six sources listed above indicates that if one is pondering whether or not to use like as a conjunction one must first consider the circumstances. If one is writing a formal paper examples of alternative words have been listed above. Perhaps it would be better to choose one of those words rather than using like. Although the use of like as a conjunction seems to be changing, and becoming more widely accepted, it would be safer to use a word that is already considered to be acceptable.

compiled by A. Hall

Works Cited

Aaron, Jane and Fowler H. Ramsey. The Little, Brown Handbook. New York:

Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc, 1998. P.329.

The American Heritage Dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992. p.1042.

Fowler, H.W. The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1996. p.458.

Greenbaum, Sidney and Jane Whitcut. Guide to English Usage. Avon: Longman Group

UK Limited, 1988. P.60.

The New York Public Library Writer’s Guide To Style and Usage. New York:

HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.

Wilson, Ken. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. New York: Columbia

University Press, 1993. p. 272.