‘Used to’ vs. ‘would’ in English

by Jakub Marian

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Both “would” and “used to” can be used to speak about an activity that someone did regularly long time ago:

Every Sunday, I used to go jogging.
Every Sunday, I would go jogging.

The sentences above mean basically the same. However, there is an important difference between “used to” and “would”; while “used to” can be used to speak about past states, “would” cannot:

correct When I was a child, I used to live in London.
unnatural When I was a child, I would live in London.

The latter sentence would only make sense if you periodically moved from and to London and would require further context for clarification. This also applies to a state of mind:

correct When I was little, I used to love chocolate.
wrong When I was little, I would love chocolate.

There is also another important difference: “would” can only be used when it is clear that you are speaking (or writing) about something that happened in the past by the time you get to it in a sentence. In our first example, the combination of “Every Sunday” and “would” makes it clear that we speak about the past, since the conditional wouldn’t make sense here. Similarly, we can say both:

When I was a student, I would go to a lot of parties.
When I was a student, I used to go to a lot of parties.

When the order of “when I was a student” and the rest of the sentence is reversed, using “would” is not appropriate because it would likely be misunderstood as the conditional:

correct I used to go to a lot of parties when I was a student.
unnatural I would go to a lot of parties when I was a student.

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