The Uses of While

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My interest in the conjunction while got picked when I saw a sign on SM Department Stores, which goes, "Pay your bills while shopping."

When I read that line, I had to look up the word "while" again. I know that while connotes simultaneous action. This means that I am paying bills and shopping at the same time, which is highly improbable to do.

Here's what I learned (again) from Dictionary.com about the uses of the conjunction "while."

1. during or in the time that.
2. throughout the time that; as long as.
3. even though; although: While she appreciated the honor, she could not accept the position.
4. at the same time that (showing an analogous or corresponding action): The floor was strewn with books, while magazines covered the tables.

That SM line is correct after all. :D

The Student Theme

by Ronald Wallace

The adjectives all ganged up on the nouns,
insistent, loud, demanding, inexact,
their Latinate constructions flashing. The pronouns
lost their referents: They were dangling, lacked
the stamina to follow the prepositions' lead
in, on, into, to, toward, for, or from.
They were beset by passive voices and dead
metaphors, conjunctions shouting But! or And!

The active verbs were all routinely modified
by adverbs, that endlessly and colorlessly ran
into trouble with the participles sitting
on the margins knitting their brows like gerunds
(dangling was their problem, too). The author
was nowhere to be seen; was off somewhere.

"The Student Theme" by Ronald Wallace, from The Uses of Adversity. © The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998.

Via: The Writer's Almanac