I had a little rant here on Friday about the use of the word ‘etc’. I don’t fall into word rage very often but here’s another one that can get me going: using ‘whilst’ instead of ‘while’.

There’s an interesting discussion about this on <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-5498,00.html" target="_blank">the Guardian’s website here</a>. I don’t think there’s anything grammatically wrong about making ‘whilst’ and ‘while’ interchangeable, though ‘whilst’ can also be used in circumstances where ‘while’ would be wrong.

No, it’s much simpler. What a very ugly word this is. <em>Whilst. </em>Say it to yourself out loud. Would you <em>speak</em> it in general conversation? Could you imagine ever uttering something like this?
<blockquote>Whilst you're at the supermarket could you buy some eggs?</blockquote>
No, I thought not. People would think you were being pompous or just downright weird. You'd use 'while', a perfectly good and simpler term.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: if you'd think twice about speaking a word there's probably a good reason to do the same when writing it.

I love the comment in the Guardian by Dominic Watt of the Department of Linguistics &amp; Phonetics, the University of Leeds who says…
<blockquote>It is… particularly beloved of students who write bad essays.</blockquote>
Quite.