When to use "although" and "despite"?

Although plenty of people here will probably have different opinions, English is kind of a weird language when you think about it so despite all those opinions, whatever sounds best is probably the way to go.

Yes, I did that on purpose. Got the idea when I read the title.

Although implies a possible alternative explanation; despite implies a definite contradictory explanation.

The usage of these types of expressions comes from the actual definition of the words themselves, as well as the grammar rules specific to each type of word.

These words are used to indicate contrast.

It was hot outside. Joe wore his heavy coat and scarf.

Joe wore his heavy coat and scarf despite the hot weather.
Despite is a conjunctive adverb, and is followed a noun (weather). It may also be followed by any clause that is treated as a noun.

Although the weather was hot, Joe wore his heavy coat and scarf.
Although is a preposition, which is used to introduce a prepositional phrase. In this example the prepositional phrase acts as an adverb, describing (or providing contrast to) the verb “wore”.

@Yetanotheruser That’s what I already know. I’m confused by things like ”Although being the top student, he didn’t pass the test” that I sometimes see in texts.

“Although” will generally be used to introduce a phrase or concept with which the writer – and readers or listeners may agree, yet signal that there will be a disagreement to come.

Although Joe Smith is a great man, a loving husband and father, a wonderful neighbor… I still think his plan to fire the school principal is a bad idea.
——-
“Despite” will introduce things that people will generally agree are bad things, and signal that “even so”, there will be some agreement to follow.

Despite the fact that Joe Smith is a drunkard who has spent half his life in prison, and is currently on the run from an ex-wife who is suing him for unpaid child support… he hasn’t been a bad neighbor, to my knowledge he has never been violent, and I do not believe that he killed the school principal.

Forget about rigid rules, and notice that the 2 words are not interchangeable. Either can be tossed before a clause, but the wording must be different. “Although it is snowing, I’m not cold” works. “Despite it is snowing, I’m not cold” does not. The tiresome reason that it doesn’t isn’t worth bothering with, but it involves “it is” From what I’ve read from you Mimi, my guess is that your feel for English idioms is rather well developed. Can you reword the first sentence with “despite” as the first word, and impart the same meaning?

@Mimishu1995 I think the “although” is being used incorrectly in those cases. “Although being the top student” doesn’t sound right to me, either. “Despite being the top student” sounds right to me, as does “although he was the top student.” I did a quick check online… it looks like the grammar sites agree with your understanding of the different usages.

Those other usages of “although” are likely incorrect, although understandable.
Those other usages of “although” are likely incorrect, despite being understandable.

*quick question: I thought “although” was a conjunction, and “despite” was a preposition?

@Soubresaut I stand corrected! See example sentence below!~!

@Mimishu1995

”Despite my best intentions, I made a mistake. Although I had just awoke, I was not fully caffeinated..”

Notice in the example above, there is no verb in the clause following “Despite”. There is a verb (had…awoke) after “Although”.

It’s simple: they’re different parts of speech. There’s no need to get into shades of meaning to differentiate them, any more than you need to list all the uses of spoons to tell them from scissors.

“Despite” is a preposition and needs a noun as its object. Every correct example above illustrates that.

“Although” is a conjunction and is followed by a clause—a construction having a noun and a verb. Every correct example above illustrates that.

“Although being the top student, he didn’t pass the test” is not a correct example.

bravo!

@jeruba “Although being the top student, he didn’t pass the test” seems completely grammatical to me.

I ♥ @Mimishu1995!

“Although he was the top student he didn’t pass the test,” sounds smoother to me.

Seems to me that “Despite” would be used with “being.” “Despite being the top student he didn’t pass the test.” I don’t know why that sounds better to me, and I’m sure someone will confuse the hell out of me by explaining it. I hate English.

@Dutchess_III, “Despite being the top student, he didn’t pass the test” is correct, and I can explain it if you want me to.

@morphail, I am and always have been in awe of your linguistic knowledge, and I have habitually deferred to it because you back it up with reasoned expertise. But I can’t agree on this one. “Although” is a conjunction introducing a subordinate clause, and we don’t have a clause with “being.” Here it has to be a participial adjective. So we don’t have a subject and a verb.

In the “despite” construction, it’s a gerund, i.e., a verbal noun, the object of the preposition.

“Being the top student, he didn’t pass the test” would be grammatical, even though it doesn’t make semantic sense as a statement.

I love participles.

Yes, “Despite being the top student he didn’t pass..” sounds right too. That isn’t what my point was.

My point was saying “Although being the top student…” (which was posted right above my comment,) sounds better with the word “despite” in front of “being.”

“Although being the top student…”
vs
“Despite being…”

If I were to use the word “Although,” I would say. “Although he was the top student…”
I would not say, “Although being…”

So now that we’re on the same page, feel free to confuse me!

Thanks for all of your responses, but I should have provided the context of this question in the first place. I’m going to help some of my friends with their English exam and now I’m going through the materials. There is one particular exercise that poses the confusion. This is the part of that exercise. Look at gap 22. At first I had the same reasoning as you and go for despite, but here is the answer. I know I have seen similar sentences like that one but I don’t know how I can explain that to my friends. They are used to the rule I said in the details and they have never experienced with English the same way you see me do.

That’s what I mean by idioms. Those of us immersed in the language all of our lives need no formal education or rules to immediately recognize that “despite obscured by cloud cover” is glaringly wrong. Nothing can follow that clause and pass for acceptable English. Although “despite BEING obscured by cloud cover” will pass muster. Are you reading Raymond Chandler & Dashiell Hammett books yet Mimi?

Ah, that would be “although.” I’m sure others can explain it better than me, but here’s a shot—

Just take the part of the sentence before the conjunction: ”... easily obscured by cloud cover, blood moons are fairly common.”

“easily obscured by cloud cover” begins with an adverb (“easily”), so it’s not a noun phrase (like “being easily obscured by cloud cover” would be). The noun and verb are, I think, implied in this case—and given to the reader in the second part of the sentence: “blood moons are.”

Short on time, I’ll follow up later if no one else has commented—quickly, try switching around the “easily obscure” and “blood moons are” parts of the sentence.

“Blood moons are fairly common, __________ easily obscured by cloud cover” has the same meaning as the reverse (and this would be true whether it was “although” or “despite” in the blank). Here, it’s easier to see that the subordinate part has an implied “they are,” and wants a conjunction to fuse the two parts.

If you said “Blood moons are fairly common, _____despite_____ easily obscured by cloud cover,” it wouldn’t make sense.

If you were to use “despite” you’d have to add “being” after it. “Blood moons are fairly common, _____despite_being____ easily obscured by cloud cover.” (I know this but I don’t know why.)

The word “Although,” fits right in there with no modification: “Blood moons are fairly common, _____although_____ easily obscured by cloud cover.”

To my mind “despite” has a much stronger connotation than “although.” It seems to me the word “despite” is used angrily: “Despite the fact that he’s been pulled over 5 times he continues to speed.”
“Although he’s been pulled over 5 times he continues to speed.” It’s gentler.

Never mind what I said about the adverb. It could have been a sentence about the clouds “easily obscuring the moon,” and it would have been a noun phrase… It had nothing to do with the adverb, and everything to do with the kind of phrase the phrase was.

Here are some rules:

A. Coordinating and subordinating conjunctions can connect clauses together. If the two clauses share a subject, or share a subject and verb, the coordinating conjunction can omit them in the second clause (forming a predicate phrase or a noun phrase); these phrases must agree with the subject or subject and verb of the main clause. The subordinating conjunction cannot.
(1cc) The dog ate his food, and the cat played with her felt toy.
(1sc) The dog ate his food, although the cat played with her felt toy.
(2cc) The slinky slunk down the steps, and [it] stopped once it reached the bottom
(2sc) The slinky slunk down the steps, although it stopped once it reached the bottom.
(2cc) Katie heard a bird singing outside her window, and [she heard] a siren wailing in the distance.
(2sc) Katie heard a bird singing outside her window, although she heard a siren wailing in the distance.

B. Coordinating and subordinating conjunctions can connect adjective phrases (2), and adverb phrases (3) to a clause. These phrases need to match with the subject and verb of the sentence, as if you could insert the subject and verb into phrase and make a separate clause.
(2cc) The events that took place today were necessary, but [they were] regrettable.
(2sc) The events that took place today were necessary, although [they were] regrettable.
(3cc) They fought the war valiantly, but vainly.
(3sc) The fought the war valiantly, although vainly.

C. Coordinating conjunctions and prepositions can connect noun phrases to a clause.
(4cc) Katie heard a bird singing outside her window, and a siren wailing in the distance. [Yes, same example as above]
(4p) Katie heard a bird singing outside her window, despite a siren wailing in the distance.

D. Phrases with subordinating conjunctions and prepositions can precede the main clause. (Coordinating conjunctions are always on the subsequent clause(s), even if that clause it its own sentence).
(5sc) Although the Stepfords were often late to parties, they always brought delicious cake.
(5p) Despite often arriving late to parties, the Stepfords always brought delicious cake.
[Notice the difference in the initial part of each sentence—5sc has a SC and a clause; 5p has a P and a noun phrase.]

Now it is a matter of correctly identifying which rules to use.

We have “_______ easily obscured by cloud cover, blood moons are fairly common.” We have an incomplete phrase followed by a clause. The phrase needs something to precede it, and with D we can see that either SC or P could do so. Now we look at the phrase. What part of speech is “easily obscured by cloud cover”? It’s not a clause—it lacks a subject and a verb—so we can ignore A for now, since the only option for SC in A is a clause. So is it an adjective phrase, adverb phrase, or noun phrase?

For that, we have to find the main word of the phrase—the part of the phrase that is carrying the bulk of the meaning. In this case, “easily” and “by cloud cover” are both modifying the word “obscured,” which is not modifying anything in the phrase.

On its own, “obscured” could be the past-tense of “to obscure,” or the past participle. For it to be the past-tense, the subject of the sentence would have to be the entity which obscures (the clouds), but in this case we have the moon, the thing being obscured. The moon is obscured—“obscured” is acting as description—so the phrase is an adjective phrase. (Additionally, if “obscured” were the past-tense of a verb, this would be a predicate phrase, necessitating a CC (see A), and violating D).

We look up at our rules, and we see that by B, CC’s and SC’s can connect adjective phrases to the main clause. However, from D, we already know it can’t be a CC, since the phrase is positioned in the beginning of the sentence. Therefore, we are looking for a subordinating conjunction that makes sense in the sentence. “Although” fits the bill, since this sentence seems to be contrasting the commonality of blood moons with a reason we don’t see them very often.

^^^ hangs head and slinks into a corner to daydream about boys.

@Jeruba
We can use “although” with non-finite or verbless clauses. The OED has several examples and I will copy some below. In “Although being the top student, he didn’t pass the test”, “although” introduces a non-finite clause and seems to me the same as these:

1787 J. Skinner tr. F. Fontana Treat. Venom of Viper I. iii. v. 395 An animal may live very well, although deprived of its head.

1920 Mycologia 12 71 Other specimens, although dead, showed no external signs of fungal parasitism.

2000 S. Fallon & M. Rothschild World Food: France 70 Although often sweet (or sweetish), such baked goods as croissants and brioches..are normally sold at bakeries.

@Dutchess_III oh that wasn’t my intention at all :( but I guess I did make it look complicated…

I know. And I have a feeling if I put my mind to it, it would make sense @Soubresaut. But…I’d rather Math or Science.

“The drawings had been done at many an odd moment of loathing or excitement and although lacking in subtlety or proportion were filled with an extraordinary energy.” – Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

Searches at the Brown Corpus and COCA return occurrences of “although” followed by “ing”.

Wow! Never thought such a question could generate a good debate.

@Soubresaut that’s some new rule for a single word! I didn’t know any of that. I only know of although as a word meaning contradiction, not a linking word with so many rules behind it. I learned something new today too, thanks :)

Now how I can explain that to my friends…

@Dutchess_III It’s ok. @Soubresaut is a language student anyway.

@stanleybmanly that’s what set me apart from other English students. I don’t go by the rules. Other students are too worried about the rules they don’t sound natural anymore. They are all about getting things right. I’m about getting things understood.

And yeah, I’ve read The Maltese Falcon and some Raymond Chandler’s books. They are great.

@Mimishu1995—hope it helped! I should add that though I called them “rules” and I do think they hold true, they’re a combination of my still limited technical understanding of grammar and my more developed personal “sense” of the language wrapped together and trotted out into four rules. Hopefully they help somewhat!

Although this has been an interesting thread, I am going to stop following, despite my continuing to learn.

@Soubresaut Hey…if they are “rules” how come the rules differ from language to language? What makes them a rule? Important enough rules to drop and otherwise smart kid from English 101 her freshman year in college? (Where I majored in journalism and, after an article I wrote for theK-State paper, and which part of was picked up and quoted by the Wichita Eagle, had a guaranteed spot on the K-state paper my Junior year?) What is the purpose of these ‘rules” of which you speak. eth. Spake. Spoke.