29.10.2018 (10)

https://www.englishpage.com/prepositions/mixed_prepositions_1.htm

Despite vs. in spite of

The prepositions in spite of and despite are exactly the same in all their definitions, and they are usually interchangeable. For writers who value brevity, despite is better. There’s nothing wrong with in spite of, though, and sometimes the three-syllable term sounds better than the two-syllable one.

Although despite generally appears about five times as often as in spite of, despite is even more heavily favored in edited writing. For example, the despite—in spite of ratio in large news publications like the New York Times and the Guardian is greater than 20 to one. One major exception is the British Financial Times, which uses despite only about twice as often as in spite of. We can’t explain this.