I’m sorry for the punny title — despite the fact that I have not written on spaces in words/phrases, and despite the fact that today’s entry is on the distinction between a while and awhile, there was no need to call it that. If it makes you feel any better, I’m paying the price for this title now, as my brain is stuck on an infinite loop of the Staind song with this title.
But having that song is my head is just as well, because Staind got it wrong. According to Amazon, the song’s title on the CD is “It’s Been Awhile”, when it ought to be “It’s Been a While”. The basic idea with a while/awhile is that it’s two words when it’s a noun phrase, and one word when it’s an adverb. One way to check this is to see if you can replace a while/awhile by for a while. If you can, it’s one word; if you can’t, it’s two words. So, for instance:
(1a) After the needlessly long hike, I slept awhile and dreamt of tossing the hike-leader off a cliff.
(1b) After the needlessly long hike, I slept for a while and dreamt of tossing the hike-leader off a cliff.
(2a) It’s been a while since I thought that Staind was a good band.
(2b) *It’s been for a while since I thought that Staind was a good band.
In sentence (1a), awhile refers to the period of sleeping. It’s an adverbial phrase, modifying slept. In sentence (2a), you’re using a while refers to the length of time between when I thought Staind was a good band and now (when, of course, I think Staind is a great band). It’s a noun phrase, and could grammatically be replaced with a more explicit length of time, such as ten minutes, 600 seconds, or one-sixth of an hour, but not by the phrase for ten minutes.
Awhile isn’t a really big player in Standard American English anymore, if it ever was. Google Books turns up ~2000 hits for awhile in books since 2000, compared to ~48000 for a while. In my experience, people generally use for a while instead of awhile. This is a happy circumstance, because it means that when you’re uncertain about which form to use, you’ll be pretty likely to succeed if you choose a while with the space. I would even go so far as to say that you will always succeed if you include the space; the Oxford English Dictionary considers a while to be an acceptable spelling for both the adverb [1c(a)] and noun [1c(b)] uses. In fact, the adverbial sense was originally two words; its first two attestations in the OED (from 1000 and 1250 AD) were as two words, and only later does the single-word spelling appear. And, though the OED considers it an improper usage, awhile as a noun phrase has been attested in serious writings over 100 years ago (1872, 1882). So you’re not in bad company if you add or subtract a space improperly.
[I forgot to mention this at first, but this post was actually the result of a request by erinstraza. I intend to respond to more of the backlog of requests in the near future.]
Summary: Here’s the deal with awhile/a while. One word means adverb, two words means noun phrase. (As a possible mnemonic, adverb is a single word and noun phrase is two words.) If you can replace it with for a while, it’s one word. You can’t really be considered wrong (by British standards, at least) if you always use it as two words, and you probably oughtn’t to be considered wrong if you always write it as one — but I would advise against that.
***
The Inner Spaces series so far:
I: A lot about alot (10/24/07)
II: All right (10/26/07)
III: Can not be split? (10/27/07)
IV: It’s Been a While (01/14/08)
Motivated Grammar 
5 comments
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January 14, 2008 at 5:20 pm
goofy
“awhile” and “a while” have been used interchangeably pretty much forever. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says “except for the fact that almost every handbook in existences worries about it, it is not important at all.”
January 15, 2008 at 11:14 am
Jonathon
I have to admit I don’t really see the point in spelling it one way for the adverb and another way for the noun phrase. After all, nobody makes that distinction for “a lot”. But that could just be the latent prescriptivist in me.
January 15, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Gabe
goofy, thanks for the MWDEU opinion. I wish to revise my opinion from “it’s all right if you don’t distinguish the forms” to “I advise against bothering to distinguish the forms”. However, I do prefer the two-word version to the one-word version for noun phrases.
Jonathon, I totally agree that there is no point to spelling it one way for the adverb and another for the noun phrase. It seems to me that most prescriptivists do for some reason. The only thing I can think of is a general tendency for adverbial phrases to become one word: altogether, alright, anymore, etc. But then what’s the point behind those being a single word, and why wouldn’t “a lot” follow the same pattern?
January 24, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Jonathon
I suppose you could make the argument that article + noun combinations don’t generally close. I’m not sure I feel strongly enough about it to make such an argument, especially considering the fact that it’s obviously not a noun phrase if it’s functioning as an adverb.
December 31, 2013 at 7:05 am
PAUL FANNING
I’ve been collecting a whole bunch of pairs like “a while/awhile”, but missed that actual one – so thanks. It seems to me that word class variation makes a big difference in lots of cases. My list includes “on board/onboard”, “up stairs/upstairs”, “sometimes/some times”, “every day/everyday” and “take away/takeaway”. Don’t like to promote my own blog too much, but “One Word or Two?” is where I’ve posted my ideas on this topic.