Prague was nice, and the Pearl Jam concert was cool, but it's nice to be back home in Budapest.
Every once in a while I post about odd English-language words that trip up many writers. I've done a few such posts, so this one will be a quick one dealing with a new one I've recently run across in my own writing.
Do you use awhile and a while interchangeably? You shouldn't! 'Awhile' is the adverb form of the phrase, though it can always also be used in the noun form 'for a while'. So you might say 'I ran awhile before going to work.' In this case 'awhile' modifies the verb 'to run' and is an adverb.
'A while' is a noun and is always accompanied by a preposition, so the above sentence could have been written 'I ran for a while before going to work.'
Yes, it's a tricky one, and I tend to use only the noun version myself, but it's good to know the difference.