Learn English – What’s the difference between “concerning” and “regarding”

differencestone

Is there a notable distinction between “concerning” and “regarding”, be it in tone alone?

I—a non-native—wondered about this when starting a sentence about the weather:

Regarding the weather, …

Concerning the weather, …

Four other random usage examples:

Aren’t all those unconditionally interchangeable?

I imagined the difference might be in context, with regarding being used when refering to something voluntarily (regards), while concerning used when somebody needs to explain oneself (concern), but I dismissed that as a wild guess with lots of examples diluting this attempt to explain.

Best Answer

This piece from the grammarist discusses about the usage of "concerning" and its possible overtones as "a cause of concern", but apart from that I think that it is interchangeable with "regarding":

  • One complaint against concerning does stand up: The word is also a preposition meaning in reference to or regarding, and the adjectival concerning can cause confusion when readers or listeners initially interpret it as the preposition.

  • For instance, if you hear someone say, “His email was concerning,” you might at first expect something to come after concerning. This complaint isn’t a rock-solid case, though, as many words in English have multiple functions, but it’s a good reason for those inclined against the word to continue avoiding it.

Actually checking with Ngram, (a question concerning vs a question regarding) it appears that "concerning" used as a preposition meaning "regarding" is quite common.

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