Nowadays, Today or These Days?

 

The adverbs nowadays, today, and these days mean at the present period, not in the past. We use these words to talk about the present when we are comparing it with the past.

Nowadays

• Nowadays many people are aware of the importance of exercise.
• The world of finance is awfully complicated nowadays.

You shouldn’t spell nowadays as ‘nowdays’, ‘nowaday’ or ‘now a day’.

These days

In more informal contexts, we use these days.

• Children grow up so quickly these days.
• I don’t do much exercise these days.
• He’s drinking heavily these days.

Today

Today is a slightly more formal way of saying that something happens at the present period.

• Many people today do their banking online.

Today can be used as a noun, but nowadays and these days are only used as adverbs. For example, you can say today’s young people or young people of today. You cannot say nowadays’s young people or young people of nowadays.

• In today's society, there is growing concern about the safety of cell phones.

Nowadays, these days and today should never be used as adjectives. You can’t say that your computer is a nowadays computer or a today computer.

When you start a sentence with one of these adverbs, you need to put a comma after them.

• These days, we rarely see each other.
• Nowadays, two in every five marriages end in divorce.
• Today, lots of people are against the death penalty.