Learn English – Differences between soon and early/earlier

word-difference

Could you please help me to distinguish the difference between 'soon' and 'early/earlier'. These words are pretty similar to me, I often get confused with their usage, please make it clear with examples.

Best Answer

They're pretty interchangeable but I think a good rule of thumb is that "sooner" generally modifies the time it takes to complete a task whereas "earlier" modifies the time of day you expected the task to be completed.

I'm going to answer this question at 1pm. Do you need it earlier?

This may imply that answering the question is a short task, but I'm going to wait until 1pm to do it. Do you want it at an earlier time than that?

I'm going to spend 10 minutes answering this question. Do you need it sooner?

Now I'm implying that I could work faster, to get it to you in less amount of time.

Really you could swap the words and it still works ("Can we do this sooner" = "Can we do this earlier") but "sooner" better addresses the time it takes to do the thing whereas "earlier" better addresses the time on the clock that you expect it to be done.