Preposition Pendant vs Pour (Duration)

Think of pendant as your stopwatch. It tracks the entire duration of an action from start to finish. It doesn't care if the action is in the past, present, or future. If you can imagine a progress bar filling up, you probably need pendant. On the other hand, pour is like your digital calendar. It is used for intended or planned duration in the future. It is very common with verbs of movement like partir or aller. You are setting a window of time for a specific plan. If you use pour correctly, you sound like a person with a solid plan. If you use it for the past, you'll confuse every French person in the room. Yes, even native speakers mess this up sometimes when they're tired, but we won't tell them that.

1. 1Using these prepositions is quite straightforward. You don't need to conjugate anything extra. Follow these steps:
2. 2Pick your preposition: pendant (duration) or pour (future intent).
3. 3Add a number or an article: deux, plusieurs, une.
4. 4Add your time unit: heures, jours, mois, ans.
5. 5Place it after the main verb or at the end of the clause.
6. 6Example: Je vais dormir + pendant + huit heures. It's as easy as ordering a croissant, and much less crumbly.

Use pendant whenever you are describing the total length of an event. This applies to the past: J'ai étudié pendant trois heures. It applies to the future: Je travaillerai pendant la journée. It even applies to general habits: Je lis pendant une heure chaque soir. Think of it as a "duration bubble." Everything inside the bubble is the time spent doing the thing.

Use pour specifically for a duration that is planned or intended, usually starting from a point in the future. You will see it most often when someone is traveling or making an appointment. Je pars à Lyon pour trois jours. The focus is on the *allocation* of time. It’s like booking a slot in your life. It signals a plan rather than just a measurement of time. Think of it like a grammar traffic light—pour gives you the green light for future plans.

Do not use pour for actions that have already happened. This is the #1 mistake English speakers make. If you say *J'ai habité ici pour deux ans*, a French person’s brain will briefly short-circuit. You must use pendant for completed past durations.

Also, don't confuse these with depuis. If the action started in the past and is *still* happening right now, you need depuis. For example: J'habite ici depuis deux ans. This means you are still living there. J'ai habité ici pendant deux ans means you lived there, but now you’ve moved on. Don't use pendant if you're still in the middle of the action and want to emphasize when it started.

The biggest trap is using pour for the past. Just remember: pour looks forward. If you’re looking back at your vacation, use pendant.

Another mistake is skipping the preposition entirely. In English, we say "I stayed two days." In French, you really need that pendant or pour to glue the sentence together. Je suis resté deux jours is technically okay in casual speech, but Je suis resté pendant deux jours is much more natural and professional.

Lastly, don't use en when you mean duration. En is for the time it *takes* to complete a task. J'ai fini le livre en deux heures means it took you two hours to finish. J'ai lu pendant deux heures just means you spent two hours reading, regardless of whether you finished the book or just looked at the pictures.

You might occasionally hear the word durant. It’s essentially a fancy twin of pendant. You can use it to sound more formal or to avoid repeating pendant twice in one sentence. It’s the "tuxedo" version of the preposition.

Then there is dans. Dans tells you *when* an action will start. Je pars dans deux jours means you leave two days from now. Je pars pour deux jours means once you leave, you will be gone for a duration of two days. It’s the difference between the "start button" and the "total runtime."