Anyway is the standard form and the one to use in writing: "The train was late, but we got there anyway." Anyways means exactly the same thing but is a dialectal, informal variant, common in casual American and Canadian speech and avoided in edited prose. There is no difference in meaning — only in register.
The core difference
This is not a meaning question, and treating it as one leads people astray. Anyway and anyways are the same word wearing different clothes. Anyway is the form that every style guide, examiner and editor expects. Anyways is a living, widely used spoken variant that marks your writing as casual — or, to some readers, as careless.
What anyway actually does
It has two everyday jobs, and it is worth separating them:
- Despite that. "She told me not to, and I did it anyway."
- Changing or resuming the subject. "Anyway, where were we?"
It also softens a dismissal at the end of a clause: "I wasn't going to go anyway."
The rule you can apply
Ask who is going to read it. If the sentence is going anywhere that has an editor, a marker or a client — a report, an essay, an email to someone senior, anything published — write anyway. If you are texting a friend or writing dialogue for a character who talks that way, anyways is fine and will read as natural speech.
Put more bluntly: you will never be wrong writing anyway. That alone is a good enough reason to default to it.
Being honest about anyways
It is not a modern corruption or a sign of illiteracy. Adverbs ending in -s are a real pattern in English — besides, towards, always, unawares — and anyways belongs to that family. It is regionally common and perfectly comprehensible. What it is not is neutral: in edited British and American prose it is rare enough that its appearance reads as a deliberate register choice or a slip. Knowing that is more useful than calling it wrong.
The genuinely different one: two words
Here there is a real distinction, and it is the one that matters most for accuracy. Any way, spelled as two words, means "any manner or method":
- Is there any way to fix this before Friday?
- Help in any way you can.
Compare: "He helped anyway" (he helped despite something) against "He helped in any way he could" (by whatever means). The test: if you could put possible or at all after it, or replace it with any method, use two words. If you could replace the whole thing with regardless, use one.
The same pattern applies to anymore/any more and everyday/every day, and the one-word-versus-two error is far more damaging to a sentence than the stray s.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is "anyways" a real word?
Yes, it is a genuine dialectal and informal variant with the same meaning as anyway. It is simply not used in edited writing, so keep it for speech and casual messages.
Is it "any way I can help" or "anyway I can help"?
Any way I can help — two words. Here it means "any method", and you could say "in any way possible". One word would mean "regardless", which is not what the sentence is doing.
Can I start a sentence with "anyway"?
Yes. "Anyway, back to the point" is standard and useful for changing subject, though it is conversational in tone, so it suits emails and blog posts more than formal reports.