Beside vs Besides

It is easy to confuse ‘beside’ and ‘besides’, but they are not one and the same thing. ‘Beside’ is a preposition, whereas ‘besides’ works as both a preposition and an adverb, and although ‘besides’ is sometimes used in place of ‘beside’, they have distinct meaning.

‘Beside’ means ‘by or at the side of’. He stood beside his new car proudly.

As a preposition, ‘besides’ means ‘in addition to’ or ‘apart from’. What are you working on besides the research project? As an adverb, it means ‘furthermore’. He was not selected because he did not have a good grasp of his concepts. Besides, he did not seem very keen.

As mentioned above, the distinction between the two words is sometimes ignored. ‘Besides’ can never mean ‘at the side of’, but ‘beside’ is often used in place of ‘besides’. This can lead to misunderstanding, though; the sentence There was no one beside him in the hall could mean that ‘he’ was all by himself, or that there was no one next to him.