Any Time or Anytime: Is It One or Two Words?

So, let’s get started with answering the question, “Is any time one or two words?” The short answer to this question is: it’s both. To understand the correct usage, there are a few things you’ll need to know to make sure you’re using the correct spelling. The good news is: there’s an easy trick that always works!

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Is there a right and wrong answer? Yes, but if you want to keep this very simple, just always use the two-word version: any time. That’s because any time is always an acceptable spelling in every situation. It’s appropriate for both formal and informal writing and grammatically fits every scenario. Sure, you can use the one-word version, anytime, correctly in some cases—but it comes with more rules. So, why bother? If you want to stop here and keep life simple—great! But if you’re curious about when it’s okay to use the one-word version and why, read on.

Grammar 101. Sentences are made up of various parts of speech that each play a role in conveying your message. Verbs show actions, nouns show who or what is committing the action, and adjectives describe the noun committing the action. Nouns, verbs, and adjectives are relatively basic parts of speech, but it can all get a little more confusing when we start talking about adverbs, prepositions, and others.

Here’s a short review of adverbs: an adverb is a word or phrase that modifies an adjective, verb, or another adverb. “Anytime” is an adverb that means “whenever” or “at any time” and modifies a verb by describing when you can perform it. An example of this is saying, “I can stop playing video games anytime I want.” The speaker is saying they can stop playing video games whenever they choose.

In contrast, “any time” is two words and functions as an adjective and a noun together. Let’s break this down so it makes more sense. Time is an idea, which makes it a noun. Any is an adjective because it describes time. You can ask the question, “Which time?” to which the answer would be, “Any.” While any is a vague adjective, it’s an adjective nonetheless. Using the same sentence from above, a speaker might say, “I can stop playing video games any time I want.” This type of phrasing could allude to them saying any of the times they choose to play video games could be their last when they want it to be.

What words are you using around it? The correct usage of anytime or any time depends on the words you choose to use around it. A hard and fast rule of adverbs is that you can’t use a preposition in front of them. Review: prepositions are words that come before nouns to describe a location in relation to another noun (e.g., to, in, at, on, with, from). The key is remembering that a preposition is used to modify a noun by either placing it immediately next to the person, place, or thing or near the adjectives used to describe it. Consider, “I sat on the brown log.” The specific log that is described is brown. The preposition “on” tells the reader the location where the speaker sat. If you chose to use an adverb in this sentence, it would have been placed before “sat.” (e.g., I quietly sat on the brown log.)

Let’s apply this to any time and anytime. “I can go to school at any time.” Because any time is a combination of an adjective and a noun, at is the preposition used to modify time. Anytime would be incorrect because “at” cannot modify an adverb. The correct phrase with anytime would be, “I can go to school anytime.”

How and when are you doing something? Anytime is most often used to modify a verb of some kind because it’s an adverb. If you’re unsure whether or not your sentence is using anytime as an adverb, try replacing it with another, simpler adverb. For instance, you might say, “I can play the piano anytime.” You can check your work by replacing anytime with another adverb. Try, “I can play the piano softly.” If you’re phrasing your sentence a little differently, like, “I can play the piano at any time,” it certainly won’t work to change it to, “I can play the piano at softly.” Use anytime to tell how you can do something and any time to tell when or how often you do it.

The great thing about trying to understand any time vs. anytime is that there’s a rock-solid solution you can default to whenever you’re in doubt. You can always use “any time” and be right. So, if you’re not sure which is correct, simply go with that.