We're going further than we've ever gone before into the difference between farther and further. Many of you have requested that we cover this commonly confused pair of words, and with good reason: "Further" is used a lot when language sticklers would use "farther."

OK, so what's the difference? "Farther" is for references to physical distance, while "further" is for figurative descriptions.

So to further your fitness goals, you might run farther than you did yesterday. Here are a couple of other examples:

The farther they drove into the mountains, the further they drifted from their original plan.

She was glad she moved farther away, but it meant she drifted further apart from her close friends.

We're sticking to this distinction in our style guide entry for now, but will it last?

The answer is probably not. People use "further" to mean "farther" so often that Garner's Modern English Usage classifies such use as Stage 4 in its language-change index. Stage 5 means a use is fully accepted, so "further" for physical distance doesn't have, um, much further to go.

It's far less common for people to use "farther" for figurative distances. Garner's classifies that as Stage 2, "widely shunned," so steer clear of that use.

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