Nang or ng?

The long and the short of it

There are two little words in the Filipino language that cause more than their fair share of headaches for writers and editors who strive to be faithful to the balarila, the official grammar of the national language. The words nang and ng are actually the same single word but with many meanings – the short ng is just an abbreviation of the longer nang. This prompts the questions, “What’s the difference?" and, "which one is correct for a given situation?”