Improve your English today at ANGLOPOD.COM. Hi everyone, I’m Dan and today we’re going to look at the difference between SINCE and FOR in English. These two words are often confusing, but we’ll look at some examples to make it clear.

Basically, we use SINCE and FOR with perfect tenses to show how long something has lasted from when it began to the time we’re talking about. For example, you could say: “I HAVE BEEN STUDYING English SINCE last year”. You could also say: “I HAVE BEEN STUDYING English FOR twelve months”.

In the first example, SINCE last year, you are giving a point in time as a reference. This action, studying English, started then and has continued until now. The second example, FOR twelve months, is a period of time, in this case measured in months.

So you can use SINCE with a date or a time, like seven o’clock, 2020, June, or Thursday, for example. But you use FOR with a period of time, measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, etc.

You can use SINCE and FOR with both present perfect simple and continuous. For example, “We HAVE KNOWN each other SINCE we were children” or “We HAVE BEEN LIVING together FOR six years”.

One very common mistake is to use ‘during’ instead of FOR. Remember, we say FOR six months, FOR six days, FOR six hours, not ‘during’.

How long HAVE you BEEN LEARNING English? Go to ANGLOPOD.COM and tell us in the comments using SINCE and FOR. See you soon!

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