Can you tell the difference?

Sometime, sometimes and some time

?I am sure that you easily mix up these words. Why do people mix them up?

One: the basic orthographic difference is the phoneme‘s’ at the coda of ‘sometimes’ and the space between ‘some’ and ‘time.’ I call that space word boundary or semantic space.

Two: they are related in meaning. They are all used to refer to the idea of time.

?However, these words are not the same in meaning, they should not therefore be used interchangeably.

‘Sometime’ is an adverb. I believe you still remember what adverbs do: they modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. ‘Sometime’ is used to refer to an indefinite or unstated or unspecified time in the future or past.

Examples:

Let us try to meet sometime.

I will finish the work sometime soon.

He finished his thesis sometime last year.

Send me a text sometime, we could have a time together.

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?‘Sometime’ is also an adjective meaning ‘former’ or ‘formerly,’ or ‘occasional.’ The ‘occasional’ meaning is now considered archaic. It is advisable you stick to ‘former’ when you use ‘sometime’ as an adjective.

Examples:

John, a sometime horticulturist, now sings at the pub for a monthly token.

The committee was headed by Timothy, sometime president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The anchor of today’s program, sometime a lecturer at the University of Legs.

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?‘Sometimes’ is an adverb meaning ‘occasionally,’ ‘in certain cases but not very often,’ or ‘now and then.’

Examples:

Sometimes, we go home and sometimes we stay behind.

Sometimes we just watch the man blab away.

You must learn to keep quiet sometimes.

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?‘Some time’ is used to refer to a long period of time. ‘Some’ could function as a determiner, pronoun or adjective.?It is used to modify nouns that are relatively much or many but unspecified in amount, extent or number. The ‘some’ here is used as an adjective to modify the noun ‘time.’

Examples:

For some time, I believed he was the one for me.

It will take some time to get this done.

For some time, people worshiped in our house.

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When you mean to express an action or something that happens occasionally, it is appropriate to use ‘sometimes’ not ‘sometime.’

Examples:

Wrong: Getting too familiar with someone can sometime turn out to be awkward.

Right: Getting too familiar with someone can sometimes turn out to be awkward.

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‘Sometime’ and ‘Sometimes’ are adverbs in this regard. But people often use the wrong adverb. So when next you intend to express something that does not happen often, go for ‘sometimes.’

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I am Omidire Joshua Idowu, your percipient writer, brutal headitor, relentless logophile, publisher, and digital marketing executive.

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With me at Famecliff Digital PRO is a team of idan content creators who make the magic that makes your brand the cynosure of all eyes.

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